ROUGHING  IT 


10 

tl 
is:  o 


21? 


m 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 

Gift  of 
THE  HONNOLD  LIBRARY 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


BY  COMMON  CONSENT  \VE  HAD  NAMED  THEM 
CLARENCE  AND  CLARICE 


Rough  in  git  De  Luxe^ 

By 

Irvin  S.  Cobb 

Author  of  "Back  Home," 

"The  Escape  of  Mr.  Trimm,"    "Cobb's  Anatomy" 
"Cob Vs  Bill  of  Fare ,"  etc. 

Illustrated  by  John  T.  McCutcheon 


New  York 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1914, 
BY  GKORGE  FT.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


To  GEORGE  H.  DOR  AN,  ESQ. 

MY  FRIEND  AND  STILL  MY  PUBLISHER; 

MY  PUBLISHER  AND  STILL 

MY  FRIEND 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


THE  TIME  TABLE 


PAGE 

A  PILGRIM  CANONIZED  .  .  .  .15 
RABID  AND  His  FRIENDS  .  .  .  .55 
How  Do  You  LIKE  THE  CLIMATE?  .  97 

IN   THE  HAUNT  OF  THE    NATIVE  SON        .    135 

LOOKING  FOR  Lo  .175 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

By  common  consent  we  had  named  them  Clarence 
and  Clarice Frontispiece 

Evidently  he  believed  the  conspiracy  against  him 
was  widespread 21 

There  was  not  a  turkey  trotter  in  the  bunch.  ...      35 

He'd  garner  in  some  fellows  that  wasn't  sheep- 
herders  61 

Because  a  man  has  a  soul  is  no  reason  he  shouldn't 
have  an  appetite 73 

He  was  a  regular  moving  picture  cowboy  and  gave 
general  satisfaction 87 

The  boy  who  sells  you  a  paper  and  the  youth  who 
blackens  your  shoes  both  show  solicitude 101 

Out  from  under  a  rock  somewhere  will  crawl  a 
real  estate  agent 115 

He  felt  that  he  was  properly  dressed  for  the  time, 
the  place  and  the  occasion 127 

Even  the  place  where  the  turkey  trot  originated 
was  trotless  and  quiet 143 

The  woman  nearest  the  wall  has  on  her  furs — it  is 
always  cool  in  the  shade 155 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

PAGE 

It's  a  great  thing  out  there  to  be  a  native  son.  ...    169 

Each  Navajo  squaw  weaves  on  an  average  nine 
thousand  blankets  a  year 179 

As  she  leveled  the  lens  a  yell  went  up  from  some- 
where      1 93 

As  the  occupants  spilled  sprawlingly  through  the 
gap,  a  front  tire  exploded  with  a  loud  report  ....    207 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


A  PILGRIM  CANONIZED 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

A  Pilgrim  Canonized 

IT  is  generally  conceded  that  the  Grand 
Canon  of  Arizona  beggars  description. 
I  shall  therefore  endeavor  to  refrain 
from  doing  so.  I  realize  that  this  is  going 
to  be  a  considerable  contract.  Nearly  every- 
body, on  taking  a  first  look  at  the  Grand 
Canon,  comes  right  out  and  admits  its  won- 
ders are  absolutely  indescribable — and  then 
proceeds  to  write  anywhere  from  two  thou- 
sand to  fifty  thousand  words,  giving  the  full 
details.  Speaking  personally,  I  wish  to  say 
that  I  do  not  know  anybody  who  has  yet 
succeeded  in  getting  away  with  the  job. 

In  the  old  days  when  he  was  doing  the 
literature  for  the  Barnum  show,  Tody 
Hamilton  would  have  made  the  best  nom- 
inee I  can  think  of.  Remember,  don't  you, 
how  when  Tody  started  in  to  write  about 
the  elephant  quadrille  you  had  to  turn  over 


16   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

to  the  next  page  to  find  the  verb?  And 
almost  any  one  of  those  young  fellows  who 
write  advertising  folders  for  the  railroads 
would  gladly  tackle  the  assignment;  in 
fact,  some  of  them  already  have — but  not 
with  any  tumultuous  success. 

In  the  presence  of  the  Grand  Canon, 
language  just  simply  fails  you  and  all  the 
parts  of  speech  go  dead  lame.  When  the 
Creator  made  it  He  failed  to  make  a  word 
to  cover  it.  To  that  extent  the  thing  is 
incomplete.  If  ever  I  run  across  a  person 
who  can  put  down  on  paper  what  the 
Grand  Canon  looks  like,  that  party  will 
be  my  choice  to  do  the  story  when  the 
Crack  of  Doom  occurs.  I  can  close  my 
eyes  now  and  see  the  headlines:  Judgment 
Day  a  Complete  Success!  Replete  with 
Incident  and  Abounding  in  Surprises- 
Many  Wealthy  Families  Disappointed- 
Full  Particulars  from  our  Special  Corre- 
spondent on  the  Spot! 

Starting  out  from  Chicago  on  the  Santa 
Fe,  we  had  a  full  trainload.  We  came  from 
everywhere:  from  peaceful  New  England 
towns  full  of  elm  trees  and  oldline  Republi- 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized  17 

cans;  from  the  Middle  States;  and  from  the 
land  of  chewing  tobacco,  prominent  Adam's 
apples  and  hot  biscuits — down  where  the 
r  is  silent,  as  in  No'th  Ca'lina.  And  all  of 
us — Northerners,  Southerners,  Easterners 
alike — were  actuated  by  a  common  purpose 
— we  were  going  West  to  see  the  country 
and  rough  it — rough  it  on  overland  trains 
better  equipped  and  more  luxurious  than 
any  to  be  found  in  the  East;  rough  it  at 
ten-dollar-a-day  hotels;  rough  it  by  tour- 
ing car  over  the  most  magnificent  auto- 
mobile roads  to  be  found  on  this  continent. 
We  were  a  daring  lot  and  resolute;  each 
and  every  one  of  us  was  brave  and  blithe 
to  endure  the  privations  that  such  an  expe- 
dition must  inevitably  entail.  Let  the 
worst  come;  we  were  prepared!  If  there 
wasn't  any  of  the  hothouse  lamb,  with 
imported  green  peas,  left,  we'd  worry  along 
on  a  little  bit  of  the  fresh  shad  roe,  and 
a  few  conservatory  cucumbers  on  the  side. 
That's  the  kind  of  hardy  adventurers  we 
were! 

Conspicuous    among    us    was    a    distin- 
guished  surgeon    of   Chicago;    in   fact,    so 


18    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

distinguished  that  he  has  had  a  very  rare 
and  expensive  disease  named  for  him, 
which  is  as  distinguished  as  a  physician 
ever  gets  to  be  in  this  country.  Abroad 
he  would  be  decorated  or  knighted.  Here 
we  name  something  painful  after  him  and 
it  seems  to  fill  the  bill  just  as  well.  This 
surgeon  was  very  distinguished  and  also 
very  exclusive.  After  you  scaled  down 
from  him,  riding  in  solitary  splendor  in  his 
drawing  room,  with  kitbags  full  of  symp- 
toms and  diagnoses  scattered  round,  we 
became  a  mixed  tourist  outfit.  I  would 
not  want  to  say  that  any  of  the  persons 
on  our  train  were  impossible,  because  that 
sounds  snobbish;  but  I  will  say  this — some 
of  them  were  highly  improbable. 

There  was  the  bride,  who  put  on  her 
automobile  goggles  and  her  automobile 
veil  as  soon  as  we  pulled  out  of  the  Chi- 
cago yards  and  never  took  them  off  again 
—except  possibly  when  sleeping.  I  pre- 
sume she  wanted  to  show  the  rest  of  us 
that  she  was  accustomed  to  traveling  at  a 
high  rate  of  speed.  If  the  bridegroom  had 
only  bethought  him  to  carry  one  of  those 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   19 

siren  horns  under  his  arm,  and  had  tooted 
it  whenever  we  went  around  a  curve,  the 
illusion  would  have  been  complete. 

There  was  also  the  middle-aged  lady 
with  the  camera  habit.  Any  time  the  train 
stopped,  or  any  time  it  behaved  as  though 
it  thought  of  stopping,  out  on  the  platform 
would  pop  this  lady,  armed  with  her  little 
accordion-plaited  camera,  with  the  lens  fo- 
cused and  the  little  atomizer  bulb  dangling 
down,  all  ready  to  take  a  few  pictures. 
She  snapshotted  watertanks,  whistling  posts, 
lunch  stands,  section  houses,  grade  crossings 
and  holes  in  the  snowshed — also  scenery, 
people  and  climate.  A  two-by-four  photo- 
graph of  a  mountain  that's  a  mile  high 
must  be  a  most  splendid  reminder  of  the 
beauties  of  Nature  to  take  home  with  you 
from  a  trip. 

There  was  the  conversational  youth  in  the 
Norfolk  jacket,  who  was  going  out  West 
to  fill  an  important  vacancy  in  a  large 
business  house — he  told  us  so  himself.  It 
was  a  good  selection,  too.  If  I  had  a  va- 
cancy that  I  wanted  filled  in  such  a  way 
that  other  people  would  think  the  vacancy 


20   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

was  still  there,  this  youth  would  have  been 
my  candidate. 

And  finally  there  was  the  corn-doctor 
from  a  town  somewhere  in  Indiana,  who 
had  the  upper  berth  in  Number  Ten.  It 
seemed  to  take  a  load  off  his  mind,  on  the 
second  morning  out,  when  he  learned  that 
he  would  not  have  to  spend  the  day  up 
there,  but  could  come  down  and  mingle 
with  the  rest  of  us  on  a  common  footing; 
but  right  up  to  the  finish  of  the  journey 
he  was  uncertain  on  one  or  two  other 
points.  Every  time  a  conductor  came 
through — Pullman  conductor,  train  con- 
ductor or  dining-car  conductor — he  would 
hail  him  and  ask  him  this  question:  "Do 
I  or  do  I  not  have  to  change  at  Williams 
for  the  Grand  Canon?"  The  conductor— 
whichever  conductor  it  was — always  said, 
Yes,  he  would  have  to  change  at  Williams. 
But  he  kept  asking  them — he  seemed  to 
regard  a  conductor  as  a  functionary  who 
would  deliberately  go  out  of  his  way  to 
mislead  a  passenger  in  regard  to  an  impor- 
tant matter  of  this  kind.  After  a  while 
the  conductors  took  to  hiding  out  from  him 


AREYOUSUR 

WE.  CHANGE  A 

WILLIAMS? 


EVIDENTLY  HE  BELIEVED  THE  CONSPIRACY 
AGAINST  HIM  WAS  WIDESPREAD 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   23 

and  then  he  began  cross-examining  the 
porters,  and  the  smoking-room  attendant, 
and  the  baggageman,  and  the  flagmen,  and 
the  passengers  who  got  aboard  down  the 
line  in  Colorado  and  New  Mexico. 

At  breakfast  in  the  dining  car  you  would 
hear  his  plaintive,  patient  voice  lifted. 
"Yes,  waiter,"  he  would  say;  "fry  'em  on 
both  sides,  please.  And  say,  waiter,  do 
you  know  for  sure  whether  we  change  at 
Williams  for  the  Grand  Canon?"  He  put 
a  world  of  entreaty  into  it;  evidently  he 
believed  the  conspiracy  against  him  was 
widespread.  At  Albuquerque  I  saw  him 
leading  off  on  one  side  a  Pueblo  Indian  who 
was  peddling  bows  and  arrows,  and  heard 
him  ask  the  Indian,  as  man  to  man,  if  he 
would  have  to  change  at  Williams  for  the 
Grand  Canon. 

When  he  was  not  worrying  about  chang- 
ing at  Williams  he  showed  anxiety  upon 
the  subject  of  the  proper  clothes  to  be 
worn  while  looking  at  the  Grand  Canon. 
Among  others  he  asked  me  about  it.  I 
could  not  help  him.  I  had  decided  to 
drop  in  just  as  I  was,  and  then  to  be 


24    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

governed  by  circumstances  as  they  might 
arise;  but  he  was  not  organized  that  way. 
On  the  morning  of  the  last  day,  as  we 
rolled  up  through  the  pine  barrens  of 
Northern  Arizona  toward  our  destination, 
those  of  us  who  had  risen  early  became 
aware  of  a  terrific  struggle  going  on  be- 
hind the  shrouding  draperies  of  that  upper 
berth  of  his.  Convulsive  spasms  agitated 
the  green  curtains.  Muffled  swear  words 
uttered  in  a  low  but  fervent  tone  filtered 
down  to  us.  Every  few  seconds  a  leg  or 
an  arm  or  a  head,  or  the  butt-end  of  a 
suitcase,  or  the  bulge  of  a  valise,  would 
show  through  the  curtains  for  a  moment, 
only  to  be  abruptly  snatched  back. 

Speculation  concerning  the  causes  of 
these  strange  manifestations  ran — as  the 
novelists  say — rife.  Some  thought  that, 
overcome  with  disappointment  by  the  dis- 
covery that  we  had  changed  at  Williams 
in  the  middle  of  the  night,  without  his 
knowing  anything  about  it,  he  was  having 
a  fit  all  alone  up  there.  Presently  the  ex- 
citement abated;  and  then,  after  having 
first  lowered  his  baggage,  our  friend  de- 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   25 

scended  to  the  aisle  and  the  mystery  was 
explained.  He  had  solved  the  question  of 
what  to  wear  while  gazing  at  the  Grand 
Canon.  He  was  dressed  in  a  new  golf 
suit,  complete — from  the  dinky  cap  to  the 
Scotch  plaid  stockings.  If  ever  that  man 
visits  Niagara,  I  should  dearly  love  to  be 
on  hand  to  see  him  when  he  comes  out  to 
view  the  Falls,  wearing  his  bathing  suit. 

Some  of  us  aboard  that  train  did  not 
seem  to  care  deeply  for  the  desert;  the  cac- 
tus possibly  disappointed  others;  and  the 
mesquit  failed  to  give  general  satisfaction, 
though  at  a  conservative  estimate  we  passed 
through  nine  million  miles  of  it.  A  few 
of  the  delegates  from  the  Eastern  seaboard 
appeared  to  be  irked  by  the  tribal  dancing 
of  the  Hopi  Indians,  for  there  was  not  a 
turkey-trotter  in  the  bunch,  the  Indian  set- 
tlements of  Arizona  being  the  only  terpsi- 
chorean  centers  in  this  country  to  which 
the  Young  Turk  movement  had  not  pene- 
trated yet.  Some  objected  to  the  plains 
because  they  were  so  flat  and  plainlike,  and 
some  to  the  mountains  because  of  their  ex- 
ceedingly mountainous  aspect;  but  on  one 


26  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

point  we  all  agreed — on  the  uniform  ex- 
cellence of  the  dining-car  service. 

It  is  a  powerfully  hard  thing  for  a  man 
to  project  his  personality  across  the  grave. 
In  making  their  wills  and  providing  for 
the  carrying  on  of  their  pet  enterprises  a 
number  of  our  richest  men  have  endeav- 
ored from  time  to  time  to  disprove  this; 
but,  to  date,  the  percentage  of  successes  has 
not  been  large.  So  far  as  most  of  us  are 
concerned  the  burden  of  proof  shows  that 
in  this  regard  we  are  one  with  the  famous 
little  dog  whose  name  was  Rover — when 
we  die,  we  die  all  over.  Every  big  success 
represents  the  personality  of  a  living  man; 
rarely  ever  does  it  represent  the  person- 
ality of  a  dead  man. 

The  original  Fred  Harvey  is  dead — has 
been  dead,  in  fact,  for  several  years;  but 
his  spirit  goes  marching  on  across  the 
southwestern  half  of  this  country.  Two 
thousand  miles  from  salt  water,  the  oysters 
that  are  served  on  his  dining  cars  do  not 
seem  to  be  suffering  from  car-sickness. 
And  you  can  get  a  beefsteak  measuring 
eighteen  inches  from  tip  to  tip.  There  are 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   21 

spring  chickens  with  the  most  magnificent 
bust  development  I  ever  saw  outside  of  a 
burlesque  show;  and  the  eggs  taste  as 
though  they  might  have  originated  with  a 
hen  instead  of  a  cold-storage  vault.  If 
there  was  only  a  cabaret  show  going  up 
and  down  the  middle  of  the  car  during 
meals,  even  the  New  York  passengers 
would  be  satisfied  with  the  service,  I  think. 
There  is  another  detail  of  the  Harvey 
system  that  makes  you  wonder.  Out  on 
the  desert,  in  a  dead-gray  expanse  of  si- 
lence and  sagebrush,  your  train  halts  at  a 
junction-  point  that  you  never  even  heard 
of  before.  There  is  not  much  to  be  seen 
—a  depot,  a  'dobe  cabin  or  so,  a  few 
frame  shacks,  a  few  natives,  a  few  Indians 
and  a  few  incurably  languid  Mexicans— 
and  that  is  positively  all  there  is  except 
that,  right  out  there  in  the  middle  of  no- 
where, stands  a  hotel  big  enough  and  hand- 
some enough  for  Chicago  or  New  York, 
built  in  the  Spanish  style,  with  wide  patios 
and  pergolas — where  a  hundred  persons 
might  perg  at  one  time — and  gay-striped 
awnings.  It  is  flanked  by  flower-beds  and 


28  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

refreshingly  green  strips  of  lawn,  with 
spouting  fountains  scattered  about. 

You  go  inside  to  a  big,  spotlessly  bright 
dining  room  and  get  as  good  a  meal  as  you 
can  get  anywhere  on  earth — and  served  in 
as  good  style,  too.  To  the  man  fresh  from 
the  East,  such  an  establishment  reminds 
him  vividly  of  the  hurry-up  railroad  lunch 
places  to  which  he  has  been  accustomed 
back  home — places  where  the  doughnuts 
are  dornicks  and  the  pickles  are  fossils, 
and  the  hard-boiled  egg  got  up  out  of  a 
sick  bed  to  be  there,  and  on  the  pallid 
yellow  surface  of  the  official  pie  a  couple 
of  hundred  flies  are  enacting  Custard's 
Last  Stand.  It  reminds  him  of  them  be- 
cause it  is  so  different.  Between  Kansas 
City  and  the  Coast  there  are  a  dozen  or 
more  of  these  hotels  scattered  along  the 
line. 

And  so,  with  real  food  to  stay  you  and 
one  of  Tuskegee's  bright,  straw-colored 
graduates  to  minister  to  your  wants  in  the 
sleeper,  you  come  on  the  morning  of  the 
third  day  to  the  Grand  Canon  in  northern 
Arizona;  you  take  one  look — and  instantly 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized    29 

you  lose  all  your  former  standards  of  com- 
parison. You  stand  there  gazing  down 
the  raw,  red  gullet  of  that  great  gosh- 
awful  gorge,  and  you  feel  your  self-impor- 
tance shriveling  up  to  nothing  inside  of 
you.  You  haven't  an  adjective  left  to  your 
back.  It  makes  you  realize  what  the  sensa- 
tions would  be  of  one  little  microbe  lost 
inside  of  Barnum's  fat  lady. 

I  think  my  preconceived  conception  of 
the  Canon  was  the  same  conception  most 
people  have  before  they  come  to  see  it  for 
themselves — a  straight  up-and-down  slit  in 
the  earth,  fabulously  steep  and  fabulously 
deep ;  nevertheless  merely  a  slit.  It  is  no 
such  thing. 

Imagine,  if  you  can,  a  monster  of  a 
hollow  approximately  some  hundreds  of 
miles  long  and  a  mile  deep,  and  anywhere 
from  ten  to  sixteen  miles  wide,  with  a 
mountain  range  —  the  most  wonderful 
mountain  range  in  the  world — planted  in 
it;  so  that,  viewing  the  spectacle  from 
above,  you  get  the  illusion  of  being  in  a 
stationary  airship,  anchored  up  among  the 
clouds;  imagine  these  mountain  peaks — 


30   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  them — rising 
one  behind  the  other,  stretching  away  in 
endless,  serried  rank  until  the  eye  swims 
and  the  mind  staggers  at  the  task  of  trying 
to  count  them;  imagine  them  splashed  and 
splattered  over  with  all  the  earthly  colors 
you  ever  saw  and  a  lot  of  unearthly  colors 
you  never  saw  before;  imagine  them  carved 
and  fretted  and  scrolled  into  all  shapes — • 
tabernacles,  pyramids,  battleships,  obelisks, 
Moorish  palaces — the  Moorish  suggestion 
is  especially  pronounced  both  in  colorings 
and  in  shapes — monuments,  minarets,  tem- 
ples, turrets,  castles,  spires,  domes,  tents, 
tepees,  wigwams,  shafts. 

Imagine  other  ravines  opening  from  the 
main  one,  all  nuzzling  their  mouths  in  her 
flanks  like  so  many  sucking  pigs;  for  there 
are  hundreds  of  these  lesser  canons,  and 
any  one  of  them  would  be  a  marvel  were 
they  not  dwarfed  into  relative  puniness  by 
the  mother  of  the  litter.  Imagine  walls 
that  rise  sheer  and  awful  as  the  Wrath  of 
God,  and  at  their  base  holes  where  you 
might  hide  all  the  Seven  Wonders  of  the 
Olden  World  and  never  know  they  were 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   31 

there — or  miss  them  either.  Imagine  a 
trail  that  winds  like  a  snake  and  climbs 
like  a  goat  and  soars  like  a  bird,  and  finally 
bores  like  a  worm  and  is  gone. 

Imagine  a  great  cloud-shadow  cruising 
along  from  point  to  point,  growing  smaller 
and  smaller  still,  until  it  seems  no  more 
than  a  shifting  purple  bruise  upon  the 
cheek  of  a  mountain,  and  then,  as  you 
watch  it,  losing  itself  in  a  tiny  rift  which 
at  that  distance  looks  like  a  wrinkle  in  the 
seamed  face  of  an  old  squaw,  but  which 
is  probably  a  huge  gash  gored  into  the 
solid  rock  for  a  thousand  feet  of  depth  and 
more  than  a  thousand  feet  of  width. 

Imagine,  way  down  there  at  the  bottom, 
a  stream  visible  only  at  certain  favored 
points  because  of  the  mighty  intervening 
ribs  and  chines  of  rock — a  stream  that  ap- 
pears to  you  as  a  torpidly  crawling  yellow 
worm,  its  wrinkling  back  spangled  with 
tarnished  white  specks,  but  which  is  really 
a  wide,  deep,  brawling,  rushing  river — the 
Colorado — full  of  torrents  and  rapids;  and 
those  white  specks  you  see  are  the  tops  of 
enormous  rocks  in  its  bed. 


32  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Imagine — if  it  be  winter — snowdrifts 
above,  with  desert  flowers  blooming  along- 
side the  drifts,  and  down  below  great 
stretches  of  green  verdure;  imagine  two 
or  three  separate  snowstorms  visibly  raging 
at  different  points,  with  clear,  bright 
stretches  of  distance  intervening  between 
them,  and  nearer  maybe  a  splendid  rain- 
bow arching  downward  into  the  great 
void;  for  these  meteorological  three-ring 
circuses  are  not  uncommon  at  certain 
seasons. 

Imagine  all  this  spread  out  beneath  the 
unflawed  turquoise  of  the  Arizona  sky  and 
washed  in  the  liquid  gold  of  the  Arizona 
sunshine — and  if  you  imagine  hard  enough 
and  keep  it  up  long  enough  you  may  be- 
gin, in  the  course  of  eight  or  ten  years, 
to  have  a  faint,  a  very  faint  and  shadowy 
conception  of  this  spot  where  the  shamed 
scheme  of  creation  is  turned  upside  down 
and  the  very  womb  of  the  world  is  laid 
bare  before  our  impious  eyes.  Then  go  to 
Arizona  and  see  it  all  for  yourself,  and  you 
will  realize  what  an  entirely  inadequate 
and  deficient  thing  the  human  imagina- 
tion is. 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   33 

It  is  customary  for  the  newly  arrived 
visitor  to  take  a  ride  along  the  edge  of  the 
canon — the  rim-drive,  it  is  called — with 
stops  at  Hopi  Point  and  Mohave  Point  and 
Pima  Point,  and  other  points  where  the 
views  are  supposed  to  be  particularly  good. 
To  do  this  you  get  into  a  smart  coach  drawn 
by  horses  and  driven  by  a  competent  young 
man  in  a  khaki  uniform.  Leaving  behind 
you  a  clutter  of  hotel  buildings  and  station 
buildings,  bungalows  and  tents,  you  go 
winding  away  through  a  Government  for- 
est reserve  containing  much  fine  standing 
timber  and  plenty  more  that  is  not  so  fine, 
it  being  mainly  stunted  pinon  and  gnarly 
desert  growths. 

Presently  the  road,  which  is  a  fine,  wide, 
macadamized  road,  skirts  out  of  the  trees 
and  threads  along  the  canon  until  it  comes 
to  a  rocky  flange  that  juts  far  over.  You 
climb  out  there  and,  instinctively  treading 
lightly  on  your  tiptoes  and  breathing  in 
syncopated  breaths,  you  steal  across  the 
ledge,  going  slowly  and  carefully  until  you 
pause  finally  upon  the  very  eyelashes  of 
eternity  and  look  down  into  that  great 
inverted  muffin-mold  of  a  canon. 


34   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

You  are  at  the  absolute  jumping-off 
place.  There  is  nothing  between  you  and 
the  undertaker  except  six  thousand  feet, 
more  or  less,  of  dazzling  Arizona  climate. 
Below  you,  beyond  you,  stretching  both 
ways  from  you,  lie  those  buried  mountains, 
the  eternal  herds  of  the  Lord's  cattlefold; 
there  are  scars  upon  their  sides,  like  the 
marks  of  a  mighty  branding  iron,  and  in 
the  distance,  viewed  through  the  vapor- 
waves  of  melting  snow,  their  sides  seem  to 
heave  up  and  down  like  the  flanks  of  pant- 
ing cattle.  Half  a  mile  under  you,  straight 
as  a  man  can  spit,  are  gardens  of  willows 
and  grasses  and  flowers,  looking  like  tiny 
green  patches,  and  the  tents  of  a  camp 
looking  like  scattered  playing  cards;  and 
there  is  a  plateau  down  there  that  appears 
to  be  as  flat  as  your  hand  and  is  seemingly 
no  larger,  but  actually  is  of  a  size  sufficient 
for  the  evolutions  of  a  brigade  of  cavalry. 

When  you  have  had  your  fill  of  this  the 
guide  takes  you  and  leads  you — you  still 
stepping  lightly  to  avoid  starting  anything 
— to  a  spot  from  which  he  points  out  to 
you,  riven  into  the  face  of  a  vast  perpen- 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   37 

dicular  chasm  above  a  cave  like  a  mon- 
strous door,  a  tremendous  and  perfect  fig- 
ure seven — the  house  number  of  the  Al- 
mighty Himself.  By  this  I  mean  no  irrev- 
erence. If  ever  Jehovah  chose  an  earthly 
abiding-place,  surely  this  place  of  awful, 
unutterable  majesty  would  be  it.  You 
move  a  few  yards  farther  along  and  in- 
stantly the  seven  is  gone — the  shift  of  shad- 
ow upon  the  rock  wall  has  wiped  it  out 
and  obliterated  it — but  you  do  not  mourn 
the  loss,  because  there  are  still  upward  of 
a  million  things  for  you  to  look  at. 

And  then,  if  you  have  timed  wisely  the 
hour  of  your  coming,  the  sun  pretty  soon 
goes  down;  and  as  it  sinks  lower  and  lower 
out  of  titanic  crannies  come  the  thickening 
shades,  making  new  plays  and  tricks  of 
painted  colors  upon  the  walls — purples  and 
reds  and  golds  and  blues,  ambers  and  um- 
bers and  opals  and  ochres,  yellows  and  tans 
and  tawnys  and  browns — and  the  canon 
fills  to  its  very  brim  with  the  silence  of 
oncoming  night. 

You  stand  there,  stricken  dumb,  your 
whole  being  dwarfed  yet  transfigured;  and 


38   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

in  the  glory  of  that  moment  you  can  even 
forget  the  gabble  of  the  lady  tourist  along- 
side of  you  who,  after  searching  her  soul 
for  the  right  words,  comes  right  out  and 
gives  the  Grand  Canon  her  cordial  in- 
dorsement. She  pronounces  it  to  be  just 
perfectly  lovely!  But  I  said  at  the  outset 
I  was  not  going  to  undertake  to  describe 
the  Grand  Canon — and  I'm  not.  These 
few  remarks  were  practically  jolted  out  of 
me  and  should  not  be  made  to  count  in  the 
total  score. 

Having  seen  the  canon — or  a  little  bit  of 
it — from  the  top,  the  next  thing  to  do  is  to 
go  down  into  it  and  view  it  from  the  sides 
and  the  bottom.  Most  of  the  visitors  fol- 
low the  Bright  Angel  Trail  which  is  hand- 
ily near  by  and  has  an  assuring  name. 
There  are  only  two  ways  to  do  the  inside 
of  the  Grand  Canon — afoot  and  on  mule- 
back.  El  Tovar  hotel  provides  the  necessary 
regalia,  if  you  have  not  come  prepared — • 
divided  skirts  for  the  women  and  leggings 
for  the  men,  a  mule  apiece  and  a  guide  to 
every  party  of  six  or  eight. 

At  the  start  there  is  always  a  lot  of  ner- 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   39 

vous  chatter — airy  persiflage  flies  to  and 
fro  and  much  laughing  is  indulged  in. 
But  it  has  a  forced,  strained  sound,  that 
laughter  has;  it  does  not  come  from  the 
heart,  the  heart  being  otherwise  engaged 
for  the  moment.  Down  a  winding  footpath 
moves  the  procession,  with  the  guide  in 
front,  and  behind  him  in  single  file  his 
string  of  pilgrims — all  as  nervous  as  cats 
and  some  holding  to  their  saddle-pommels 
with  death-grips.  Just  under  the  first  ter- 
race a  halt  is  made  while  the  official  pho- 
tographer takes  a  picture;  and  when  you 
get  back  he  has  your  finished  copy  ready 
for  you,  so  you  can  see  for  yourself  just 
how  pale  and  haggard  and  wall-eyed  and 
how  much  like  a  typhoid  patient  you 
looked. 

The  parade  moves  on.  All  at  once  you 
notice  that  the  person  immediately  ahead 
of  you  has  apparently  ridden  right  over  the 
wall  of  the  canon.  A  moment  ago  his 
arched  back  loomed  before  you;  now  he 
is  utterly  gone.  It  is  at  this  point  that 
some  tourists  tender  their  resignations — to 
take  effect  immediately.  To  the  credit  of 


40   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  sex,  be  it  said,  the  statistics  show  that 
fewer  women  quit  here  than  men.  But 
nearly  always  there  is  some  man  who  re- 
members where  he  left  his  umbrella  or 
something,  and  he  goes  back  after  it  and 
forgets  to  return. 

In  our  crowd  there  was  one  person  who 
left  us  here.  He  was  a  circular  person; 
about  forty  per  cent  of  him,  I  should  say, 
rhymed  with  jelly.  He  climbed  right  down 
off  his  mule.  He  said: 

"I'm  not  scared  myself,  you  understand, 
but  I've  just  recalled  that  my  wife  is  a  ner- 
vous woman.  She'd  have  a  fit  if  she  knew  I 
was  taking  this  trip!  I  love  my  wife,  and 
for  her  sake  I  will  not  go  down  this  canon, 
dearly  as  I  would  love  to."  And  with 
that  he  headed  for  the  hotel.  I  wanted  to 
go  with  him.  I  wanted  to  go  along  with 
him  and  comfort  him  and  help  him  have 
his  chill,  and  if  necessary  send  a  telegram 
for  him  to  his  wife — she  was  in  Pittsburgh 
— telling  her  that  all  was  well.  But  I  did 
not.  I  kept  on.  I  have  been  trying  to 
figure  out  ever  since  whether  this  showed 
courage  on  my  part,  or  cowardice. 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized    41 

Over  the  ridge  and  down  the  steep  de- 
clivity beyond  goes  your  mule,  slipping  a 
little.  He  is  reared  back  until  his  rump 
almost  brushes  the  trail;  he  grunts  mild 
protests  at  every  lurching  step  and  grips 
his  shoecalks  into  the  half-frozen  path. 
You  reflect  that  thousands  of  persons  have 
already  done  this  thing;  that  thousands  of 
others — men,  women  and  children — are  go- 
ing to  do  it,  and  that  no  serious  accident 
has  yet  occurred — which  is  some  comfort, 
but  not  much.  The  thought  comes  to  you 
that,  after  all,  it  is  a  very  bright  and  beau- 
tiful world  you  are  leaving  behind.  You 
turn  your  head  to  give  it  a  long,  lingering 
farewell,  and  you  try  to  put  your  mind 
on  something  cheerful — such  as  your  life 
insurance.  Then  something  happens. 

The  trail,  that  has  been  slanting  at  a 
downward  angle  which  is  a  trifle  steeper 
than  a  ship's  ladder,  but  not  quite  so  steep 
perhaps  as  a  board  fence,  takes  an  abrupt 
turn  to  the  right.  You  duck  your  head 
and  go  through  a  little  tunnel  in  the  rock, 
patterned  on  the  same  general  design  of  the 
needle's  eye  that  is  going  to  give  so  many 


42    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

of  our  prominent  captains  of  industry  trou- 
ble in  the  hereafter.  And  as  you  emerge 
on  the  lower  side  you  forget  all  about  your 
life-insurance  papers  and  freeze  to  your 
pommel  with  both  hands,  and  cram  your 
poor  cold  feet  into  the  stirrups — even  in 
warm  weather  they'll  be  good  and  cold— 
and  all  your  vital  organs  come  up  in  your 
throat,  where  you  can  taste  them.  If  any- 
body had  shot  me  through  the  middle  just 
about  then  he  would  have  inflicted  only 
a  flesh  wound. 

You  have  come  out  on  a  place  where  the 
trail  clings  to  the  sheer  side  of  the  dizziest, 
deepest  chasm  in  the  known  world.  One 
of  your  legs  is  scraping  against  the  ever- 
lasting granite;  the  other  is  dangling  over 
half  a  mile  of  fresh  mountain  air.  The 
mule's  off  hind  hoof  grates  and  grinds  on 
the  flinty  trail,  dislodging  a  fair-sized  stone 
that  flops  over  the  verge.  You  try  to  look 
down  and  see  where  it  is  going  and  find 
you  haven't  the  nerve  to  do  it — but  you 
can  hear  it  falling  from  one  narrow  ledge 
to  another,  picking  up  other  boulders  as  it 
goes  until  there  must  be  a  fair-sized  little 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized    43 

avalanche  of  them  cascading  down.  The 
sound  of  their  roaring,  racketing  passage 
grows  fainter  and  fainter,  then  dies  almost 
out,  and  then  there  rises  up  to  you  from 
those  unutterable  depths  a  dull,  thuddy 
little  sound — those  stones  have  reached  the 
cellar!  Then  to  you  there  comes  the  pleas- 
ing reflection  that  if  your  mule  slipped 
and  you  fell  off  and  were  dashed  to  frag- 
ments, they  would  not  be  large,  mussy, 
irregular  fragments,  but  little  teeny-weeny 
fragments,  such  as  would  not  bring  the 
blush  of  modesty  to  the  cheek  of  the  most 
fastidious. 

Only  your  mule  never  slips  off!  It  is 
contrary  to  a  mule's  religion  and  politics, 
and  all  his  traditions  and  precedents,  to 
slip  off.  He  may  slide  a  little  and  stumble 
once  in  a  while,  and  he  may,  with  malice 
aforethought,  try  to  scrape  you  off  against 
the  outjutting  shoulders  of  the  trail;  but  he 
positively  will  not  slip  off.  It  is  not  be- 
cause he  is  interested  in  you.  A  tourist  on 
the  canon's  rim  a  simple  tourist  is  to  him 
and  nothing  more;  but  he  has  no  intention 
of  getting  himself  hurt.  Instinct  has  taught 


44  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

that  mule  it  would  be  to  him  a  highly 
painful  experience  to  fall  a  couple  of  thou- 
sand feet  or  so  and  light  on  a  pile  of  rocks; 
and  therefore,  through  motives  that  are 
purely  selfish,  he  studiously  refrains  from 
so  doing.  When  the  Prophet  of  old  wrote, 
"How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are 
the  feet  of  him,"  and  so  on,  I  judge  he 
had  reference  to  a  mule  on  a  narrow  trail. 
My  mule  had  one  very  disconcerting 
way  about  him — or,  rather,  about  her,  for 
she  was  of  the  gentler  sex.  When  she  came 
to  a  particularly  scary  spot,  which  was 
every  minute  or  so,  she  would  stop  dead 
still.  I  concurred  in  that  part  of  it  heart- 
ily. But  then  she  would  face  outward  and 
crane  her  neck  over  the  fathomless  void 
of  that  bottomless  pit,  and  for  a  space  of 
moments  would  gaze  steadily  downward, 
with  a  despondent  droop  of  her  fiddle- 
shaped  head  and  a  suicidal  gleam  in  her 
mournful  eyes.  It  worried  me  no  little; 
and  if  I  had  known,  at  the  time,  that  she 
had  a  German  name  it  would  have  worried 
me  even  more,  I  guess.  But  either  the 
time  was  not  ripe  for  the  rash  act  or  else 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   45 

she  abhorred  the  thought  of  being  found 
dead  in  the  company  of  a  mere  tourist,  so 
she  did  not  leap  off  into  space,  but  re- 
strained herself;  and  I  was  very  grateful 
to  her  for  it.  It  made  a  bond  of  sympathy 
between  us. 

On  you  go,  winding  on  down  past  the 
red  limestone  and  the  yellow  limestone 
and  the  blue  sandstone,  which  is  green 
generally;  past  huge  bat  caves  and  the 
big  nests  of  pack-rats,  tucked  under  shelves 
of  Nature's  making;  past  stratified  mill- 
ions of  crumbling  seashells  that  tell  to 
geologists  the  tale  of  the  salt-water  ocean 
that  once  on  a  time,  when  the  world  was 
young  and  callow,  filled  this  hole  brim 
full;  and  presently,  when  you  have  begun 
to  piece  together  the  tattered  fringes  of 
your  nerves,  you  realize  that  the  canon  is 
even  more  wonderful  when  viewed  from 
within  than  it  is  when  viewed  from  with- 
out. Also,  you  begin  to  notice  now  that  it 
is  most  extensively  autographed. 

Apparently  about  every  other  person 
who  came  this  way  remarked  to  himself 
that  this  canon  was  practically  completed 


46   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

and  only  needed  his  signature  as  collab- 
orator to  round  it  out — so  he  signed  it  and 
after  that  it  was  a  finished  job.  Some  of 
them  brought  down  colored  chalk  and  sten- 
cils, and  marking  pots,  and  paints  and 
brushes,  and  cold  chisels  to  work  with, 
which  must  have  been  a  lot  of  trouble,  but 
was  worth  it — it  does  add  so  greatly  to  the 
beauty  of  the  Grand  Canon  to  find  it  span- 
gled over  with  such  names  as  you  could 
hear  paged  in  almost  any  dollar-a-day 
American-plan  hotel.  The  guide  pointed 
out  a  spot  where  one  of  these  inspired 
authors  climbed  high  up  the  face  of  a 
white  cliff  and,  clinging  there,  carved  out 
in  letters  a  foot  long  his  name;  and  it 
was  one  of  those  names  that,  inscribed 
upon  a  register,  would  instinctively  cause 
any  room  clerk  to  reach  for  the  key  to  an 
inside  one,  without  bath.  I  regret  to  state 
that  nothing  happened  to  this  person.  He 
got  down  safe  and  sound;  it  was  a  great 
pity,  too. 

By  the  Bright  Angel  Trail  it  is  three 
hours  on  a  mule  to  the  plateau,  where  there 
are  green  summery  things  growing  even  in 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized    47 

midwinter,  and  where  the  temperature  is 
almost  sultry;  and  it  is  an  hour  or  so  more 
to  the  riverbed,  down  at  the  very  bottom. 
When  you  finally  arrive  there  and  look  up 
you  do  not  see  how  you  ever  got  down,  for 
the  trail  has  magically  disappeared;  and 
you  feel  morally  sure  you  are  never  going 
to  get  back.  If  your  mule  were  not  under 
you  pensively  craning  his  head  rearward  in 
an  effort  to  bite  your  leg  off,  you  would 
almost  be  ready  to  swear  the  whole  thing 
was  an  optical  illusion,  a  wondrous  dream. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  so 
strange  that  some  travelers  who  have  been 
game  enough  until  now  suddenly  weaken. 
Their  nerves  capsize  and  the  grit  runs  out 
of  them  like  sand  out  of  an  overturned 
pail. 

All  over  this  part  of  Arizona  they  tell 
you  the  story  of  the  lady  from  the  southern 
part  of  the  state — she  was  a  school  teacher 
and  the  story  has  become  an  epic — who 
went  down  Bright  Angel  one  morning  and 
did  not  get  back  until  two  o'clock  the  fol- 
lowing morning;  and  then  she  came  against 
her  will  in  a  litter  borne  by  two  tired 


48   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

guides,  while  two  others  walked  beside  her 
and  held  her  hands;  and  she  was  protest- 
ing at  every  step  that  she  positively  could 
not  and  would  not  go  another  inch;  and 
she  was  as  hysterical  as  a  treeful  of  chick- 
adees; her  hat  was  lost,  and  her  glasses 
were  gone,  and  her  hair  hung  down  her 
back,  and  altogether  she  was  a  mournful 
sight  to  see. 

Likewise  the  natives  will  tell  you  the 
tale  of  a  man  who  made  the  trip  by  crawl- 
ing round  the  more  sensational  corners 
upon  his  hands  and  knees;  and  when  he 
got  down  he  took  one  look  up  to  where,  a 
sheer  mile  above  him,  the  rim  of  the  canon 
showed,  with  the  tall  pine  trees  along  its 
edge  looking  like  the  hairs  upon  a  cater- 
pillar's back,  and  he  announced  firmly  that 
he  wished  he  might  choke  if  he  stirred 
another  step.  Through  the  miraculous  in- 
dulgence of  a  merciful  providence  he  was 
down,  and  that  was  sufficient  for  him;  he 
wasn't  going  to  trifle  with  his  luck.  He 
would  stay  down  until  he  felt  good  and 
rested,  and  then  he  would  return  to  his 
home  in  dear  old  Altoona  by  some  other 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized   49 

route.  He  was  very  positive  about  it. 
There  were  two  guides  along,  both  of  them 
patient  and  forbearing  cowpunchers,  and 
they  argued  with  him.  They  pointed  that 
there  was  only  one  suitable  way  for  him 
to  get  out  of  the  canon,  and  that  was  the 
way  by  which  he  had  got  into  it. 

"The  trouble  with  you  fellows,"  said  the 
man,  "is  that  you  are  too  dad-blamed  tech- 
nical. The  point  is  that  I'm  here,  and 
here  I'm  going  to  stay." 

"But,"  they  told,  him,  "you  can't  stay 
here.  You'd  starve  to  death  like  that  poor 
devil  that  some  prospectors  found  in  that 
gulch  yonder — turned  to  dusty  bones,  with 
a  pack  rat's  nest  in  his  chest  and  a  rock 
under  his  head.  You'd  just  naturally 
starve  to  death." 

"There  you  go  again,"  he  said,  "import- 
ing these  trivial  foreign  matters  into  the 
discussion.  Let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the 
main  issue,  which  is  that  I  am  not  going 
back.  This  rock  shall  fly  from  its  firm 
base  as  soon  as  I,"  he  said,  or  words  to  that 
effect. 

So   insisting,   he   sat  down,    putting  his 


50  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

own  firm  base  against  the  said  rock,  and 
prepared  to  become  a  permanent  resident. 
He  was  a  grown  man  and  the  guides  were 
less  gentle  with  him  than  they  had  been 
with  the  lady  school  teacher.  They  roped 
his  arms  at  the  elbows  and  hoisted  him 
upon  a  mule  and  tied  his  legs  together 
under  the  mule's  belly,  and  they  brought 
him  out  of  there  like  a  sack  of  bran — only 
he  made  more  noise  than  any  sack  of  bran 
has  ever  been  known  to  make. 

Coming  back  up  out  of  the  Grand  Canon 
is  an  even  more  inspiring  and  amazing 
performance  than  going  down.  But  by 
now — anyhow  this  was  my  experience,  and 
they  tell  me  it  is  the  common  experience 
— you  are  beginning  to  get  used  to  the 
sensation  of  skirting  along  the  raw  and 
ragged  verge  of  nothing.  Narrow  turns 
where,  going  down,  your  hair  pushed  your 
hat  off,  no  longer  affright  you;  you  take 
them  jauntily — almost  debonairly.  You 
feel  that  you  are  now  an  old  mountain- 
sealer,  and  your  soul  begins  to  crave  for  a 
trip  with  a  few  more  thrills  to  the  square 
inch  in  it.  You  get  your  wish.  You  go 


A  Pilgrim  Canonized  51 

down  Hermit  Trail,  which  its  middle 
name  is  thrills;  and  there  you  make  the 
acquaintance  of  the  Hydrophobic  Skunk. 
The  Hydrophobic  Skunk  is  a  creature  of 
such  surpassing  accomplishments  and  vivid 
personality  that  I  feel  he  is  entitled  to  a 
new  chapter.  The  Hydrophobic  Skunk 
will  be  continued  in  our  next. 


52     Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


RABID  AND  HIS  FRIENDS 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


Rabid  and  His  Friends 

THE  Hydrophobia  Skunk  resides  at 
the  extreme  bottom  of  the  Grand 
Canon  and,  next  to  a  Southern  Re- 
publican who  never  asked  for  a  Federal 
office,  is  the  rarest  of  living  creatures.  He 
is  so  rare  that  nobody  ever  saw  him — that 
is,  nobody  except  a  native.  I  met  plenty 
of  tourists  who  had  seen  people  who  had 
seen  him,  but  never  a  tourist  who  had  seen 
him  with  his  own  eyes.  In  addition  to 
being  rare,  he  is  highly  gifted. 

I  think  almost  anybody  will  agree  with 
me  that  the  common,  ordinary  skunk  has 
been  most  richly  dowered  by  Nature.  To 
adorn  a  skunk  with  any  extra  qualifications 
seems  as  great  a  waste  of  the  raw  material 
as  painting  the  lily  or  gilding  refined  gold. 
He  is  already  amply  equipped  for  outdoor 
pursuits.  Nobody  intentionally  shoves  him 


56    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

round;  everybody  gives  him  as  much  room 
as  he  seems  to  need.  He  commands  respect 
—nay,  more  than  that,  respect  and  venera- 
tion— wherever  he  goes.  Joy-riders  never 
run  him  down  and  foot  passengers  avoid 
crowding  him  into  a  corner.  You  would 
think  Nature  had  done  amply  well  by  the 
skunk;  but  no — the  Hydrophobic  Skunk 
comes  along  and  upsets  all  these  calcula- 
tions. Besides  carrying  the  traveling  cre- 
dentials of  an  ordinary  skunk,  he  is  rabid 
in  the  most  rabidissimus  form.  He  is  not 
mad  just  part  of  the  time,  like  one's  rela- 
tives by  marriage — and  not  mad  most  of 
the  time,  like  the  old-fashioned  railroad 
ticket  agent — but  mad  all  the  time — incura- 
bly, enthusiastically  and  unanimously  mad! 
He  is  mad  and  he  is  glad  of  it. 

We  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  Hy- 
drophobic Skunk  when  we  rode  down  Her- 
mit Trail.  The  casual  visitor  to  the  Grand 
Canon  first  of  all  takes  the  rim  drive;  then 
he  essays  Bright  Angel  Trail,  which  is 
sufficiently  scary  for  his  purposes  until  he 
gets  used  to  it;  and  after  that  he  grows 
more  adventurous  and  tackles  Hermit 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   57 

Trail,  which  is  a  marvel  of  corkscrew  con- 
volutions, gimleting  its  way  down  this  red 
abdominal  wound  of  a  canon  to  the  very 
gizzard  of  the  world. 

Alongside  the  Hermit,  traveling  the 
Bright  Angel  is  the  same  as  gathering  the 
myrtles  with  Mary;  but  the  civil  engineers 
who  worked  out  the  scheme  of  the  Hermit 
and  made  it  wide  and  navigable  for  ordi- 
nary folks  were  bright  young  men.  They 
laid  a  wall  along  its  outer  side  all  the 
way  from  the  top  to  the  bottom.  Now 
this  wall  is  made  of  loose  stones  racked 
up  together  without  cement,  and  it  is  no- 
where more  than  a  foot  or  a  foot  and  a  half 
high.  If  your  mule  ever  slipped — which 
he  never  does — or  if  you  rolled  off  on  your 
own  hook — which  has  not  happened  to  date 
—that  puny  little  wall  would  hardly  stop 
you — might  not  even  cause  you  to  hesitate. 
But  some  way,  intervening  between  you 
and  a  thousand  feet  or  so  of  uninterrupted 
fresh  air,  it  gives  a  tremendous  sense  of 
security.  Life  is  largely  a  state  of  mind, 
anyhow,  I  reckon. 

As    a    necessary    preliminary    to    going 


58   Roughing  It  L)e  Luxe 

down  Hermit  Trail  you  take  a  buckboard 
ride  of  ten  miles — ten  wonderful  miles! 
Almost  immediately  the  road  quits  the 
rocky,  bare  parapet  of  the  gorge  and  winds 
off  through  the  noble,  big  forest  that  is  a 
part  of  the  Government  reserve.  Jays  that 
are  twice  as  large  and  three  times  as  vocal 
as  the  Eastern  variety  weave  blue  threads 
in  the  green  background  of  the  pines;  and 
if  there  is  snow  upon  the  ground  its  bil- 
lowy white  surface  is  crossed  and  criss- 
crossed with  the  dainty  tracks  of  coyotes, 
and  sometimes  with  the  broad,  furry  marks 
of  the  wildcat's  pads.  The  air  is  a  blessing 
and  the  sunshine  is  a  benediction. 

Away  off  yonder,  through  a  break  in  the 
conifers,  you  see  one  lone  and  lofty  peak 
with  a  cap  of  snow  upon  its  top.  The 
snow  fills  the  deeper  ravines  that  furrow 
its  side  downward  from  the  summit  so  that 
at  this  distance  it  looks  as  though  it  were 
clutched  in  a  vast  white  owl's  claw;  and 
generally  there  is  a  wispy  cloud  caught  on 
it  like  a  white  shirt  on  a  poor  man's  Mon- 
day washpole.  Or,  huddled  together  in  a 
nest  formation  like  so  many  speckled  eggs, 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   59 

you  see  the  clutch  of  little  mottled  moun- 
tains for  which  nobody  seems  to  have  a 
name.  If  these  mountains  were  in  Scot- 
land, Sir  Walter  Scott  and  Bobby  Burns 
would  have  written  about  them  and  they 
would  be  world-famous,  and  tourists  from 
America  would  come  and  climb  their 
slopes,  and  stand  upon  their  tops,  and  sop 
up  romance  through  all  their  pores.  But 
being  in  Arizona,  dwarfed  by  the  heaven- 
reaching  ranges  and  groups  that  wall  them 
in  north,  south  and  west,  they  have  not 
even  a  Christian  name  to  answer  to. 

Anon — that  is  to  say,  at  the  end  of  those 
ten  miles — you  come  to  the  head  of  Her- 
mit Trail.  There  you  leave  your  buck- 
board  at  a  way  station  and  mount  your 
mule.  Presently  you  are  crawling  down- 
ward, like  a  fly  on  a  board  fence,  into  the 
depths  of  the  chasm.  You  pass  through 
rapidly  succeeding  graduations  of  geology, 
verdure,  scenery  and  temperature.  You 
ride  past  little  sunken  gardens  full  of  wild 
flowers  and  stunty  fir  trees,  like  bits  of  Old 
Japan;  you  climb  naked  red  slopes  crowned 
with  the  tall  cactus,  like  Old  Mexico;  you 


60   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

skirt  bald,  bare,  blistered  vistas  of  deso- 
lation, like  Old,  Perdition.  You  cross 
Horsethief's  Trail,  which  was  first  traced 
out  by  the  moccasined  feet  of  marauding 
Apaches  and  later  was  used  by  white  out- 
laws fleeing  northward  with  their  stolen 
pony  herds. 

You  pass  above  the  gloomy  shadows  of 
Blythe's  Abyss  and  wind  beneath  a  great 
box-shaped  formation  of  red  sandstone  set 
on  a  spindle  rock  and  balancing  there  in 
dizzy  space  like  Mohammed's  coffin;  and 
then,  at  the  end  of  a  mile-long  jog  along 
a  natural  terrace  stretching  itself  midway 
between  Heaven  and  the  other  place,  you 
come  to  the  residence  of  Shorty,  the  official 
hermit  of  the  Grand  Canon. 

Shorty  is  a  little,  gentle  old  man,  with 
warped  legs  and  mild  blue  eyes  and  a  set 
of  whiskers  of  such  indeterminate  aspect 
that  you  cannot  tell  at  first  look  whether 
they  are  just  coming  out  or  just  going  back 
in.  He  belongs — or  did  belong — to  the 
vast  vanishing  race  of  oldtime  gold  pros- 
pectors. Halfway  down  the  trail  he  does 
light  housekeeping  under  an  accommodat- 


HE'D  GARNER  IN  SOME  FELLOWS 
THAT  WASN'T  SHEEPHERDERS 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   63 

ing  flat  ledge  that  pouts  out  over  the  path- 
way like  a  snuffdipper's  under  lip.  He  has 
a  hole  in  the  rock  for  his  chimney,  a 
breadth  of  weathered  gray  canvas  for  his 
door  and  an  eighty-mile  stretch  of  the  most 
marvelous  panorama  on  earth  for  his  front 
yard.  He  minds  the  trail  and  watches  out 
for  the  big  boulders  that  sometimes  fall  in 
the  night;  and,  except  in  the  tourist  season, 
he  leads  a  reasonably  quiet  existence. 

Alongside  of  Shorty,  Robinson  Crusoe 
was  a  tenement-dweller,  and  Jonah,  week- 
ending in  the  whale,  had  a  perfectly  up- 
roarious time;  but  Shorty  thrives  on  a 
solitude  that  is  too  vast  for  imagining.  He 
would  not  trade  jobs  with  the  most  potted 
potentate  alive — only  sometimes  in  mid- 
summer he  feels  the  need  of  a  change 
stealing  over  him,  and  then  he  goes  afoot 
out  into  the  middle  of  Death  Valley  and 
spends  a  happy  vacation  of  five  or  six 
weeks  with  the  Gila  monsters  and  the  heat. 
He  takes  Toby  with  him. 

Toby  is  a  gentlemanly  little  woolly  dog 
built  close  to  the  earth  like  a  carpet  sweep- 
er, with  legs  patterned  crookedly — after 


64   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  model  of  his  master's.  Toby  has  one 
settled  prejudice:  he  dislikes  Indians.  You 
have  only  to  whisper  the  word  "Injun"  and 
instantly  Toby  is  off,  scuttling  away  to  the 
highest  point  that  is  handy.  From  there 
he  peers  all  round  looking  for  red  invaders. 
Not  rinding  any  he  comes  slowly  back, 
crushed  to  the  earth  with  disappointment. 
Nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  decide  what 
Toby  would  do  with  the  Indians  if  he 
found  them;  but  he  and  Shorty  are  in  per- 
fect accord.  They  have  been  associated 
together  ever  since  Toby  was  a  pup  and 
Shorty  went  into  the  hermit  business,  and 
that  was  ten  years  ago.  Sitting  cross- 
legged  on  a  flat  rock  like  a  little  gnome, 
with  his  puckered  eyes  squinting  off  at 
space,  Shorty  told  us  how  once  upon  a  time 
he  came  near  losing  Toby. 

"Me  and  Toby,"  he  said,  "was  over  to 
Flagstaff,  and  that  was  several  years 
ago.  There  was  a  saloon  man  over  there 
owned  a  bulldog  and  he  wanted  that  his 
bulldog  and  Toby  should  fight.  Toby  can 
lick  mighty  nigh  any  dog  alive;  but  I 
didn't  want  that  Toby  should  fight.  But 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   65 

this  here  saloon  man  wouldn't  listen.  He 
sicked  his  bulldog  on  to  Toby  and  in  about 
a  minute  Toby  was  taking  that  bulldog  all 
apart. 

"This  here  saloon  man  he  got  mad  then 
—he  got  awful  mad.  He  wanted  to  kill 
Toby  and  he  pulled  out  his  pistol.  I 
begged  him  mighty  hard  please  not  to 
shoot  Toby — I  did  so!  I  stood  in  front 
of  Toby  to  protect  him  and  I  begged  that 
man  not  to  do  it.  Then  some  other  fellows 
made  him  put  up  his  gun,  and  me  and 
Toby  came  on  away  from  there."  His 
voice  trailed  off.  "I  certainly  would  'a' 
hated  to  lose  Toby.  We  set  a  heap  of  store 
by  one  another — don't  we,  dog?"  And 
Toby  testified  that  it  was  so — testified  with 
wriggling  body  and  licking  tongue  and 
dancing  eyes  and  a  madly  wagging  stump 
tail. 

As  we  mounted  and  jogged  away  we 
looked  back,  and  the  pair  of  them — Shorty 
and  Toby — were  sitting  there  side  by  side 
in  perfect  harmony  and  perfect  content; 
and  I  could  not  help  wondering,  in  a  coun- 
try where  we  sometimes  hang  a  man  for 


66   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

killing  a  man,  what  would  have  been  ade- 
quate punishment  for  a  brute  who  would 
kill  Toby  and  leave  Shorty  without  his 
partner!  In  another  minute,  though,  we 
had  rounded  a  jagged  sandstone  shoulder 
and  they  were  out  of  sight. 

About  that  time  Johnny,  our  guide,  felt 
moved  to  speech,  and  \ve  hearkened  to  his 
words  and  hungered  for  more,  for  Johnny 
knows  the  ranges  of  the  Northwest  as  a 
city  dweller  knows  his  own  little  side  street. 
In  the  fall  of  the  year  Johnny  comes  down 
to  the  Canon  and  serves  as  a  guide  a  while; 
and  then,  when  he  gets  so  he  just  can't 
stand  associating  with  tourists  any  longer, 
he  packs  his  warbags  and  journeys  back 
to  the  Northern  Range  and  enjoys  the 
company  of  cows  a  spell.  Cows  are  not 
exactly  exciting,  but  they  don't  ask  fool 
questions. 

A  highly  competent  young  person  is 
Johnny  and  a  cowpuncher  of  parts.  Most 
of  the  Canon  guides  are  cowpunchers— 
accomplished  ones,  too,  and  of  high  stand- 
ing in  the  profession.  With  a  touch  of  rev- 
erence Johnny  pointed  out  to  us  Sam  Sco- 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   6  7 

vel,  the  greatest  bronco  buster  of  his  time, 
now  engaged  in  piloting  tourists. 

"Can  he  ride?"  echoed  Johnny  in  an- 
swer to  our  question.  "Scovel  could  ride 
an  earthquake  if  she  stood  still  long  enough 
for  him  to  mount!  He  rode  Steamboat — 
not  Young  Steamboat,  but  Old  Steamboat! 
He  rode  Rocking  Chair,  and  he's  the  only 
man  that  ever  did  do  that  and  not  be  called 
on  in  a  couple  of  days  to  attend  his  own 
funeral." 

This  day  he  told  us  about  one  Tom,  who 
lived  up  in  Wyoming,  where  Johnny  came 
from.  It  appeared  that  in  an  easier  day 
Tom  was  hired  by  some  cattle  men  to  thin 
out  the  sheep  herders  who  insisted  upon  in- 
vading the  public  ranges.  By  Johnny's 
account  Tom  did  the  thinning  with  con- 
scientious attention  to  detail  and  gave  gen- 
eral satisfaction  for  a  while;  but  eventually 
he  grew  careless  in  his  methods  and  took  to 
killing  parties  who  were  under  the  protec- 
tion of  the  game  laws.  Likewise  his  own 
private  collection  of  yearlings  began  to  in- 
crease with  a  rapidity  which  was  only  to  be 
accounted  for  on  the  theory  that  a  large 


68   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

number  of  calves  were  coming  into  the 
world  with  Tom's  brand  for  a  birthmark. 
So  he  lost  popularity.  Several  times  his 
funeral  was  privily  arranged,  but  on  each 
occasion  was  postponed  owing  to  the  fail- 
ure of  the  corpse  to  be  present.  Finally  he 
killed  a  young  boy  and  was  caught  and 
convicted,  and  one  morning  they  took  him 
out  and  hanged  him  rather  extensively. 

"Torn  was  mighty  methodical,"  said 
Johnny.  "He  got  five  hundred  a  head  for 
killing  sheep  herders — that  was  the  regu- 
lar tariff.  Every  time  he  bumped  one  off 
he'd  put  a  stone  under  his  head,  which 
was  his  private  mark — a  kind  of  a  duebill, 
as  you  might  say.  And  when  they'd  find 
that  dead  herder  with  the  rock  under  his 
head  they'd  know  there  was  another  five 
hundred  comin'  to  Tom  on  the  books;  they 
always  paid  it,  too.  Once  in  a  while, 
though,  he'd  cut  loose  in  a  saloon  and  gar- 
ner in  some  fellows  that  wasn't  sheep  herd- 
ers. There  was  quite  a  number  that 
thought  Tom  acted  kind  of  ungentlemanly 
when  he  was  drinkin'." 

We  went  on  and  on  at  a  lazy  mule-trot, 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   6  9 

hearing  the  unwritten  annals  of  the  range 
from  one  who  had  seen  them  enacted  at 
first  hand.  Pretty  soon  we  passed  a  herd 
of  burros  with  mealy,  dusty  noses  and 
spotty  hides,  feeding  on  prickly  pears  and 
rock  lichens;  and  just  before  sunset  we  slid 
down  the  last  declivity  out  upon  the  pla- 
teau and  came  to  a  camp  as  was  a  camp! 

This  was  roughing  it  de  luxe  with  a 
most  de-luxey  vengeance!  Here  were  three 
tents,  or  rather  three  canvas  houses,  with 
wooden  half-walls;  and  they  were  spick- 
and-span  inside  and  out,  and  had  glass 
windows  in  them  and  doors  and  matched 
wooden  floors.  The  one  that  was  a  bed- 
room had  gay  Navajo  blankets  on  the  floor, 
and  a  stove  in  it,  and  a  little  bureau,  and 
a  washstand  with  white  towels  and  good 
lathery  soap.  And  there  were  two  beds— 
not  cots  or  bunks,  but  regular  beds — with 
wire  springs  and  mattresses  and  white 
sheets  and  pillowslips.  They  were  not  vet- 
eran sheets  and  vintage  pillowslips  either, 
but  clean  and  spotless  ones.  The  mess  tent 
was  provided  with  a  table  with  a  clean 
cloth  to  go  over  it,  and  there  were  china 


70    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

dishes  and  china  cups  and  shiny  knives, 
forks  and  spoons.  Every  scrap  of  this 
equipment  had  been  brought  down  from 
the  top  on  burro  packs.  The  Grand  Canon 
is  scenically  artistic,  but  it  is  a  non-pro- 
ducing district.  And  outside  there  was  a 
corral  for  the  mules;  a  canvas  storehouse; 
hitching  stakes  for  the  burros;  a  Dutch 
oven,  and  a  little  forge  where  the  guides 
sometimes  shoe  a  mule.  They  aren't  black- 
smiths; they  merely  have  to  be.  Bill  was 
in  charge  of  the  camp — a  dark,  rangy, 
good-looking  young  leading  man  of  a  cow- 
boy, wearing  his  blue  shirt  and  his  red 
neckerchief  with  an  air.  He  spoke  with 
the  soft  Texas  drawl  and  in  his  way  was  as 
competent  as  Johnny. 

The  sun,  which  had  been  winking  fare- 
wells to  us  over  the  rim  above,  dropped 
out  of  sight  as  suddenly  as  though  it  had 
fallen  into  a  well.  From  the  bottom  the 
shadows  went  slanting  along  the  glooming 
walls  of  the  gorges,  swallowing  up  the  yel- 
low patches  of  sunlight  that  still  lingered 
near  the  top  like  blacksnakes  swallowing 
eggs.  Every  second  the  colors  shifted  and 


Rabid  and  His  Friends    71 

changed;  what  had  been  blue  a  moment 
before  was  now  purple  and  in  another 
minute  would  be  a  velvety  black.  A  little 
lost  ghost  of  an  echo  stole  out  of  a  hole 
and  went  straying  up  and  down,  feebly 
mocking  our  remarks  and  making  them 
sound  cheap  and  tawdry. 

Then  the  new  moon  showed  as  a  silver 
fish,  balancing  on  its  tail  and  arching  itself 
like  a  hooked  skipjack.  In  a  purpling  sky 
the  stars  popped  out  like  pinpricks  and  the 
peace  that  passes  all  understanding  came 
over  us.  I  wish  to  take  advantage  of  this 
opportunity  to  say  that,  in  my  opinion, 
David  Belasco  has  never  done  anything  in 
the  way  of  scenic  effects  to  beat  a  moon- 
rise  in  the  Grand  Canon. 

I  reckon  we  might  have  been  there  un- 
til now — my  companion  and  I — soaking 
our  souls  in  the  unutterable  beauty  of  that 
place,  only  just  about  that  time  we  smelled 
something  frying.  There  was  also  a  most 
delectable  sputtering  sound  as  of  fat  meat 
turning  over  on  a  hot  skillet;  but  just  the 
smell  alone  was  a  square  meal  for  a  poor 
family.  The  meeting  adjourned  by  ac- 


12    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

clamation.  Just  because  a  man  has  a  soul 
is  no  reason  he  shouldn't  have  an  appetite. 

That  Johnny  certainly  could  cook! 
Served  on  china  dishes  upon  a  cloth-cov- 
ered table,  we  had  mounds  of  fried  steaks 
and  shoals  of  fried  bacon;  and  a  bushel, 
more  or  less,  of  sheepherder  potatoes;  and 
green  peas  and  sliced  peaches  out  of  cans; 
and  sourdough  biscuits  as  light  as  kisses 
and  much  more  filling;  and  fresh  butter 
and  fresh  milk;  and  coffee  as  black  as  your 
hat  and  strong  as  sin.  How  easy  it  is  for 
civilized  man  to  become  primitive  and 
comfortable  in  his  way  of  eating,  especially 
if  he  has  just  ridden  ten  miles  on  a  buck- 
board  and  nine  more  on  a  mule  and  is 
away  down  at  the  bottom  of  the  Grand 
Canon — and  there  is  nobody  to  look  on 
disapprovingly  when  he  takes  a  bite  that 
would  be  a  credit  to  a  steam  shovel! 

Despite  all  reports  to  the  contrary,  I 
wish  to  state  that  it  is  no  trouble  at  all  to 
eat  green  peas  off  a  knifeblade — you 
merely  mix  them  in  with  potatoes  for  a  ce- 
ment; and  fried  steak — take  it  from  an  old 
steak-eater — tastes  best  when  eaten  with 


BECAUSE  A  MAN  HAS  A  SOUL  IS  NO  REASON 
HE  SHOULDN'T  HAVE  AN  APPETITE 


Rabid  and  His  Friends    75 

those  tools  of  Nature's  own  providing, 
both  hands  and  your  teeth.  An  hour  passed 
—busy,  yet  pleasant — and  we  were  both 
gorged  to  the  gills  and  had  reared  back 
with  our  cigars  lit  to  enjoy  a  third  jorum 
of  black  coffee  apiece,  when  Johnny,  speak- 
ing in  an  offhand  way  to  Bill,  who  was 
still  hiding  away  biscuits  inside  of  himself 
like  a  parlor  prestidigitator,  said: 

"Seen  any  of  them  old  hydrophobies  the 
last  day  or  two?" 

"Not  so  many,"  said  Bill  casually. 
"There  was  a  couple  out  last  night  piroot- 
in'  round  in  the  moonlight.  I  reckon, 
though,  there'll  be  quite  a  flock  of  'em  out 
tonight.  A  new  moon  always  seems  to 
fetch  'em  up  from  the  river." 

Both  of  us  quit  blowing  on  our  coffee 
and  we  put  the  cups  down.  I  think  I  was 
the  one  who  spoke. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  I  asked,  "but  what 
did  you  say  would  be  out  tonight?" 

"We  were  just  speakin'  to  one  another 
about  them  Hydrophoby  Skunks,"  said 
Bill  apologetically.  "This  here  Canon  is 
where  they  mostly  hang  out  and  frolic 
'round." 


76  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

I  laid  down  my  cigar,  too.  I  admit  I 
was  interested. 

"Oh!"  I  said  softly— like  that.  "Is  it? 
Do  they?" 

"Yes,"  said  Johnny.  "I  reckin  there's 
liable  to  be  one  come  shovin'  his  old  nose 
into  that  door  any  minute.  Or  probably 
two — they  mostly  travels  in  pairs — sets,  as 
you  might  say." 

"You'd  know  one  the  minute  you  saw 
him,  though,"  said  Bill.  "They're  smaller 
than  a  regular  skunk  and  spotted  where 
the  other  kind  is  striped.  And  they  got  lit- 
tle red  eyes.  You  won't  have  no  trouble  at 
all  recognizin'  one." 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  we  both  got 
up  and  moved  back  by  the  stove.  It  was 
warmer  there  and  the  chill  of  evening 
seemed  to  be  settling  down  noticeably. 

"Funny  thing  about  Hydrophoby 
Skunks,"  went  on  Johnny  after  a  moment 
of  pensive  thought — "mad,  you  know!" 

"What  makes  them  mad?"  The  two  of 
us  asked  the  question  together. 

"Born  that  way!"  explained  Bill — "mad 
from  the  start,  and  won't  never  do  nothin' 
to  get  shut  of  it" 


Rabid  and  His  Friends    7  7 

"Ahem — they  never  attack  humans,  I 
suppose?" 

"Don't  they?"  said  Johnny,  as  if  sur- 
prised at  such  ignorance.  "Why,  humans 
is  their  favorite  pastime!  Humans  is  just 
pie  to  a  Hydrophoby  Skunk.  It  ain't  really 
any  fun  to  be  bit  by  a  Hydrophoby  Skunk 
neither."  He  raised  his  coffee  cup  to  his 
lips  and  imbibed  deeply. 

"Which  you  certainly  said  something 
then,  Johnny,"  stated  Bill.  "You  see,"  he 
went  on,  turning  to  us,  "they  aim  to  catch 
you  asleep  and  they  creep  up  right  soft 
and  take  holt  of  you — take  holt  of  a  year 
usually — and  clamp  their  teeth  and  just 
hang  on  for  further  orders.  Some  says 
they  hang  on  till  it  thunders,  same  as  snap- 
pin'  turtles.  But  that's  a  lie,  I  judge,  be- 
cause there's  weeks  on  a  stretch  down  here 
when  it  don't  thunder.  All  the  cases  I  ever 
heard  of  they  let  go  at  sun-up." 

"It  is  right  painful  at  the  time,"  said 
Johnny,  taking  up  the  thread  of  the  nar- 
rative; "and  then  in  nine  days  you  go  mad 
yourself.  Remember  that  fellow  the  Hy- 
drophoby Skunk  bit  down  here  by  the 


18  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

rapids,  Bill?  Let's  see  now — what  was 
that  hombre's  name?" 

"Williams,"  supplied  Bill— "Heck  Will- 
iams. I  saw  him  at  Flagstaff  when  they 
took  him  there  to  the  hospital.  That  guy 
certainly  did  carry  on  regardless.  First  he 
went  mad  and  his  eyes  turned  red,  and  he 
got  so  he  didn't  have  no  real  use  for  water 
—well,  them  prospectors  don't  never  care 
much  about  water  anyway — and  then  he 
got  to  snappin'  and  bitin'  and  foamin'  so's 
they  had  to  strap  him  down  to  his  bed. 
He  got  loose  though." 

"Broke  loose,  I  suppose?"  I  said. 

"No,  he  bit  loose,"  said  Bill  with  the  air 
of  one  who  would  not  deceive  you  even  in 
a  matter  of  small  details. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  he  bit  those  leather 
straps  in  two?" 

"No,  sir;  he  couldn't  reach  them,"  ex- 
plained Bill,  "so  he  bit  the  bed  in  two. 
Not  in  one  bite,  of  course,"  he  went  on. 
"It  took  him  several.  I  saw  him  after  he 
was  laid  out.  He  really  wasn't  no  credit 
to  himself  as  a  corpse." 

I'm  not  sure,  but  I  think  my  companion 


Rabid  and  His  Friends    79 

and  I  were  holding  hands  by  now.  Out- 
side we  could  hear  that  little  lost  echo 
laughing  to  itself.  It  was  no  time  to  be 
laughing  either.  Under  certain  circum- 
stances I  don't  know  of  a  lonelier  place 
anywhere  on  earth  than  that  Grand  Canon. 

Presently  my  friend  spoke,  and  it  seemed 
to  me  his  voice  was  a  mite  husky.  Well, 
he  had  a  bad  cold. 

"You  said  they  mostly  attack  persons 
who  are  sleeping  out,  didn't  you?" 

"That's  right,  too,"  said  Johnny,  and  Bill 
nodded  in  affirmation. 

"Then,  of  course,  since  we  sleep  indoors 
everything  will  be  all  right,"  I  put  in. 

"Well,  yes  and  no,"  answered  Johnny. 
"In  the  early  part  of  the  evening  a  hydro- 
phoby  is  liable  to  do  a  lot  of  prowlin' 
round  outdoors;  but  toward  mornin'  they 
like  to  get  into  camps — they  dig  up  under 
the  side  walls  or  come  up  through  the 
floor — and  they  seem  to  prefer  to  get  in 
bed  with  you.  They're  cold-blooded,  I 
reckin,  same  as  rattlesnakes.  Cool  nights 
always  do  drive  'em  in,  seems  like." 

"It's  going  to  be  sort  of  coolish  to-night," 
said  Bill  casually. 


80   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

It  certainly  was.  I  don't  remember  a 
chillier  night  in  years.  My  teeth  were 
chattering  a  little — from  cold — before  we 
turned  in.  I  retired  with  all  my  clothes 
on,  including  my  boots  and  leggings,  and 
I  wished  I  had  brought  along  my  ear- 
muffs.  I  also  buttoned  my  watch  into  my 
lefthand  shirt  pocket,  the  idea  being  if  for 
any  reason  I  should  conclude  to  move  dur- 
ing the  night  I  would  be  fully  equipped 
for  traveling.  The  door  would  not  stay 
closely  shut — the  doorjamb  had  sagged  a 
little  and  the  wind  kept  blowing  the  door 
ajar.  But  after  a  while  we  dozed  off. 

It  was  one-twenty-seven  A.M.  when  I 
woke  with  a  violent  start.  I  know  this 
was  the  exact  time  because  that  was  when 
my  watch  stopped.  I  peered  about  me  in 
the  darkness.  The  door  was  wide  open— 
I  could  tell  that.  Down  on  the  floor  there 
was  a  dragging,  scuffling  sound,  and  from 
almost  beneath  me  a  pair  of  small  red  eyes 
peered  up  phosphorescently. 

"He's  here!"  I  said  to  my  companion  as 
I  emerged  from  my  blankets;  and  he,  wak- 
ing instantly,  seemed  instinctively  to  know 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   81 

whom  I  meant.  I  used  to  wonder  at  the 
ease  with  which  a  cockroach  can  climb  a 
perfectly  smooth  wall  and  run  across  the 
ceiling.  I  know  now  that  to  do  this  is  the 
easiest  thing  in  the  world— if  you  have  the 
proper  incentive  behind  you.  I  had  gone 
up  one  wall  of  the  tent  and  had  crossed 
over  and  was  in  the  act  of  coming  down 
the  other  side  when  Bill  burst  in,  his  eyes 
blurred  with  sleep,  a  lighted  lamp  in  one 
hand  and  a  gun  in  the  other. 

I  never  was  so  disappointed  in  my  life 
because  it  wasn't  a  Hydrophobic  Skunk  at 
all.  It  was  a  pack  rat,  sometimes  called 
a  trade  rat,  paying  us  a  visit.  The  pack 
or  trade  rat  is  also  a  denizen  of  the  Grand 
Canon.  He  is  about  four  times  as  big  as 
an  ordinary  rat  and  has  an  appetite  to 
correspond.  He  sometimes  invades  your 
camp  and  makes  free  with  your  things,  but 
he  never  steals  anything  outright — he  mere- 
ly trades  with  you;  hence  his  name.  He 
totes  off  a  side  of  meat  or  a  bushel  of  meal 
and  brings  a  cactus  stalk  in;  or  he  will  con- 
fiscate your  saddlebags  and  leave  you  in 
exchange  a  nice  dry  chip.  He  is  honest, 


82  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

but  from  what  I  can  gather  he  never  gets 
badly  stuck  on  a  deal. 

Next  morning  at  breakfast  Johnny  and 
Bill  were  doing  a  lot  of  laughing  between 
them  over  something  or  other.  But  we  had 
our  revenge!  About  noon,  as  we  were 
emerging  at  the  head  of  the  trail,  we  met 
one  of  the  guides  starting  down  with  a 
couple  that,  for  the  sake  of  convenience, 
we  had  christened  Clarence  and  Clarice. 
Shorty  hailed  us. 

"How's  everything  down  at  the  camp?" 
he  inquired. 

"Oh,  all  right!"  replied  Bill— "only 
there's  a  good  many  of  them  Hydrophoby 
Skunks  pesticatin'  about.  Last  night  we 
seen  four." 

Clarence  and  Clarice  crossed  startled 
glances,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  Clarice's 
cheek  paled  a  trifle;  or  it  may  have  been 
Clarence's  cheek  that  paled.  He  bent 
forward  and  asked  Shorty  something,  and 
as  we  departed  full  of  joy  and  content  we 
observed  that  Shorty  was  composing  him- 
self to  unload  that  stock  horror  tale.  It 
made  us  very  happy. 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   83 

By  common  consent  we  had  named  them 
Clarence  and  Clarice  on  their  arrival  the 
day  before.  At  first  glance  we  decided 
they  must  have  come  from  Back  Bay,  Bos- 
ton— probably  by  way  of  Lenox,  Newport 
and  Palm  Beach;  if  Harvard  had  been  a 
co-educational  institution  we  should  have 
figured  them  as  products  of  Cambridge. 
It  was  a  shock  to  us  all  when  we  learned 
they  really  hailed  from  Chicago.  They 
were  nearly  of  a  height  and  a  breadth,  and 
similar  in  complexion  and  general  expres- 
sion; and  immediately  after  arriving  they 
had  appeared  for  the  ride  down  the  Bright 
Angel  in  riding  suits  that  were  identical 
in  color,  cut  and  effect — long-tailed,  tight- 
buttoned  coats;  derby  hats;  stock  collars; 
shiny  top  boots;  cute  little  crops,  and 
form-fitting  riding  trousers  with  those 
Bartlett  pear  extensions  midships  and  aft 
— and  the  prevalent  color  was  a  soft,  melt- 
ing, misty  gray,  like  a  cow's  breath  on  a 
frosty  morning.  Evidently  they  had  both 
patronized  the  same  tailor. 

He  was  a  wonder,  that  tailor.  Using 
practically  the  same  stage  effects,  he  had, 


84    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

nevertheless,  succeeded  in  making  Clarence 
look  feminine  and  Clarice  look  masculine. 
We  had  gone  down  to  the  rim  to  see  them 
off.  And  when  they  passed  us  in  all  the 
gorgeousness  of  their  city  bridle-path  re- 
galia, enthroned  on  shaggy  mules,  behind 
a  flock  of  tourists  in  nondescript  yet  appro- 
priate attire,  and  convoyed  by  a  cowboy 
who  had  no  reverence  in  his  soul  for  the 
good,  the  sweet  and  the  beautiful,  but  kept 
sniggering  to  himself  in  a  low,  coarse  way, 
we  felt — all  of  us — that  if  we  never  saw 
another  thing  we  were  amply  repaid  for 
our  journey  to  Arizona. 

The  exactly  opposite  angle  of  this  phe- 
nomenon was  presented  by  a  certain  East- 
ern writer,  a  member,  as  I  recall,  of  the 
Jersey  City  school  of  Wild  West  story 
writers,  who  went  to  Arizona  about  two 
years  ago  to  see  if  the  facts  corresponded 
with  his  fiction;  if  not  he  would  take  steps 
to  have  the  facts  altered — I  believe  that 
was  the  idea.  He  reached  El  Tovar  at 
Grand  Canon  in  the  early  morning,  hur- 
ried at  once  to  his  room  and  presently 
appeared  attired  for  breakfast.  Compe- 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   85 

tent  eyewitnesses  gave  me  the  full  details. 
He  wore  a  flannel  shirt  that  was  unbut- 
toned at  the  throat  to  allow  his  Adam's 
apple  full  sweep,  a  hunting  coat,  buckskin 
pants  and  high  boots,  and  about  his  waist 
was  a  broad  belt  supporting  on  one  side  a 
large  revolver — one  of  the  automatic  kind, 
which  you  start  in  to  shooting  by  pulling 
the  trigger  merely  and  then  have  to  throw 
a  bucket  of  water  on  it  to  make  it  stop — 
and  on  the  other  side,  as  a  counterpoise, 
was  a  buck-handled  bowie  knife  such  as 
was  so  universally '  not  used  by  the  early 
pioneers  of  our  country. 

As  he  crossed  the  lobby,  jangling  like  a 
milk  wagon,  he  created  a  pronounced  im- 
pression upon  all  beholders.  The  hotel  is 
managed  by  an  able  veteran  of  the  hotel 
business,  assisted  by  a  charming  and  ac- 
complished wife;  it  is  patronized  by  scien- 
tists, scholars  and  cosmopolitans,  who  come 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  to  see  the 
Grand  Canon;  and  it  is  as  up-to-the-minute 
in  its  appointments  and  service  as  though 
it  fronted  on  Broadway,  or  Chestnut  Street, 
or  Pennsylvania  Avenue. 


86   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Our  hero  careened  across  the  interven- 
ing space.  On  reaching  the  dining  room 
he  snatched  off  his  coat  and,  with  a  gesture 
that  would  have  turned  Hackett  or  Faver- 
sham  as  green  with  envy  as  a  processed 
stringbean,  flung  it  aside  and  prepared  to 
enter.  It  was  plain  that  he  proposed  to  put 
on  no  airs  before  the  simple  children  of  the 
desert  wilds.  He  would  eat  his  antelope 
steak  and  his  grizzly  b'ar  chuck  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves, the  way  Kit  Carson  and  Old  Man 
Bridger  always  did. 

The  young  woman  who  presides  over  the 
dining  room  met  him  at  the  door.  In  the 
cool,  clarified  accents  of  a  Wellesley  grad- 
uate, which  she  is,  she  invited  him  to  have 
on  his  things  if  he  didn't  mind.  She  also 
offered  to  take  care  of  his  hardware  for 
him  while  he  was  eating.  He  consented  to 
put  his  coat  back  on,  but  he  clung  to  his 
weapons — there  was  no  telling  when  the 
Indians  might  start  an  uprising.  Probably 
at  the  moment  it  would  have  deeply  pained 
him  to  learn  that  the  only  Indian  uprising 
reported  in  these  parts  in  the  last  forty 
years  was  a  carbuncle  on  the  back  of  the 


i   H 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   89 

neck  of  Uncle  Hopi  Hooligan,  the  gentle 
copper-colored  floorwalker  of  the  white- 
goods  counter  in  the  Hopi  House,  adjacent 
to  the  hotel! 

However,  he  stayed  on  long  enough  to 
discover  that  even  this  far  west  ordinary 
human  garments  make  a  most  excellent 
protective  covering  for  the  stranger.  Many 
of  the  tourists  do  not  do  this.  They  arrive 
in  the  morning,  take  a  hurried  look  at  the 
Canon,  mail  a  few  postal  cards,  buy  a 
Navajo  blanket  or  two  and  are  out  again 
that  night.  Yet  they  could  stay  on  for  a 
month  and  make  every  hour  count.  To 
begin  with,  there  is  the  Canon,  worth  a 
week  of  anybody's  undivided  attention. 
Within  easy  reach  are  the  Painted  Desert 
and  the  Petrified  Forests — thousands  of 
acres  of  trees  turned  to  solid  agate.  If 
these  things  were  in  Europe  they  would  be 
studded  thick  with  hotels  and  American 
by  the  thousand  would  flock  across  the 
seas  to  look  at  them.  There  are  cliff- 
dwellers'  ruins  older  than  ancient  Babylon 
and  much  less  expensive. 

The  reservations  of  the  Hopis  and  the 


90  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Navajos,  most  distinctive  of  all  the  South- 
ern tribes,  are  handy,  while  all  about 
stretches  a  big  Government  reserve  full 
of  natural  wonders  and  unnatural  ones, 
too — everything  on  earth  except  a  Lover's 
Leap.  There  are  unexcelled  facilities  for 
Lover's  Leaps,  too — thousands  of  appro- 
priate places  are  within  easy  walking  dis- 
tance of  the  hotel;  but  no  lover  ever  yet 
cared  to  leap  where  he  would  have  to  drop 
five  or  six  thousand  feet  before  he  landed. 
He'd  be  such  a  mussy  lover;  no  satisfac- 
tion to  himself  then — or  to  the  undertaker, 
either. 

However,  as  I  was  saying,  most  of  the 
tourists  run  in  on  the  morning  train  and 
out  again  on  the  evening  train.  To  this 
breed  belonged  a  youth  who  dropped  in 
during  our  stay;  I  think  he  must  have  fol- 
lowed the  crowd  in.  As  he  came  out  from 
breakfast  I  chanced  to  be  standing  on  the 
side  veranda  and  I  presume  he  mistook  me 
for  one  of  the  hired  help.  This  mistake 
has  occurred  before  when  I  was  stopping 
at  hotels. 

"My  friend,"  he  said  to  me  in  the  pat- 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   91 

ronizing  voice  of  an  experienced  traveler, 
"is  there  anything  interesting  to  see  round 
here  at  this  time  of  day?" 

Either  he  had  not  heard  there  was  a 
Grand  Canon  going  on  regularly  in  that 
vicinity  or  he  may  have  thought  it  was 
open  only  for  matinees  and  evenings.  So 
I  took  him  by  the  hand  and  led  him  over 
to  the  curio  store  and  let  him  look  at  the 
Mexican  drawnwork.  It  seemed  to  satisfy 
him,  too — until  by  chance  he  glanced  out 
of  a  window  and  discovered  that  the  Canon 
was  in  the  nature  of  a  continuous  per- 
formance. 

The  same  week  there  arrived  a  party  of 
six  or  eight  Easterners  who  yearned  to  see 
some  of  those  real  genuine  Wild  Western 
characters  such  as  they  had  met  so  often  in 
a  film.  The  manager  trotted  out  a  troupe  of 
trail  guides  for  them — all  ex-cowboys;  but 
they,  being  merely  half  a  dozen  sunburned, 
quiet  youths  in  overalls,  did  not  fill  the 
bill  at  all.  The  manager  hated  to  have  his 
guests  depart  disappointed.  Privately  he 
called  his  room  clerk  aside  and  told  him 
the  situation  and  the  room  clerk  offered  to 
oblige. 


92  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

The  room  clerk  had  come  from  Ohio 
two  years  before  and  was  a  mighty  accom- 
modating young  fellow.  He  slipped  across 
to  the  curio  store  and  put  on  a  big  hat 
and  some  large  silver  spurs  and  a  pair  of 
leather  chaps  made  by  one  of  the  most 
reliable  mail-order  houses  in  this  country. 
Thus  caparisoned,  he  mounted  a  pony  and 
came  charging  across  the  lawn,  uttering 
wild  ki-yis  and  quirting  his  mount  at  every 
jump.  He  steered  right  up  the  steps  to 
the  porch  where  the  delighted  Easterners 
were  assembled,  and  then  he  yanked  the 
pony  back  on  his  haunches  and  held  him 
there  with  one  hand  while  with  the  other 
he  rolled  a  brown-paper  cigarette — which 
was  a  trick  he  had  learned  in  a  high-school 
frat  at  Cincinnati — and  altogether  he  was 
the  picture  of  a  regular  moving-picture 
cowboy  and  gave  general  satisfaction. 

If  the  cowboys  are  disappointing  in  their 
outward  aspect,  however,  Captain  Jim 
Hance  is  not.  The  captain  is  the  official 
prevaricator  of  the  Grand  Canon.  It  is 
probably  the  only  salaried  job  of  the  sort 
in  the  world — his  competitors  in  the  same 


Rabid  and  His  Friends   93 

line  of  business  mainly  work  for  the  love 
of  it.  He  is  a  venerable  retired  prospector 
who  is  specially  retained  by  the  Santa  Fe 
road  for  the  sole  purpose  of  stuffing  the 
casual  tourist  with  the  kind  of  fiction  the 
casual  tourist's  system  seems  to  crave.  He 
just  moons  round  from  spot  to,  spot,  ro- 
mancing as  he  goes. 

Two  of  the  captain's  standbys  have  been 
advertised  to  the  world.  One  of  them  deals 
with  the  sad  fate  of  his  bride,  who  on  her 
honeymoon  fell  off  into  the  Canon  and 
lodged  on  a  rim  three  hundred  feet  below. 
"I  was  two  days  gettin'  down  to  the  poor 
little  thing,"  he  tells  you,  "and  then  I  seen 
both  her  hind  legs  was  broke."  Here  the 
captain  invariably  pauses  and  looks  out 
musingly  across  the  Canon  until  the  victim 
bites  with  an  impatient  "What  happened 
then?"  "Oh,  I  knew  she  wouldn't  be  no 
use  to  me  any  more  as  a  bride — so  I  shot 
her!"  The  other  tale  he  saves  up  until 
some  tenderfoot  notices  the  succession  of 
blazes  upon  the  treetrunks  along  one  of  the 
forest  trails  and  wants  to  know  what  made 
those  peculiar  marks  upon  the  bark  all  at 


94    Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  same  height  from  the  earth.  Captain 
Hance  explains  that  he  himself  did  it— 
with  his  elbows  and  knees — while  fleeing 
from  a  war  party  of  Apaches. 

His  newest  one,  though — the  one  he  is 
featuring  this  year — is,  in  the  opinion  of 
competent  judges,  the  gem  of  the  Hance 
collection.  It  concerns  the  fate  of  one 
Total  Loss  Watkins,  an  old  and  devoted 
friend  of  the  captain.  As  a  preliminary 
he  leads  a  group  of  wide-eared,  doe-eyed 
victims  to  the  rim  of  the  Canon.  "Right 
here,"  he  says  sorrowfully,  "was  where 
poor  old  Total  slipped  off  one  day.  It's 
two  thousand  feet  to  the  first  ledge  and  we 
thought  he  was  a  gone  fawnskin,  sure! 
But  he  had  on  rubber  boots,  and  he  had 
the  presence  of  mind  to  light  standing  up. 
He  bounced  up  and  down  for  two  days 
and  nights  without  stoppin',  and  then  we 
had  to  get  a  wingshot  to  kill  him  in  order 
to  keep  him  from  starvin'  to  death." 

The  next  stop  will  be  Southern  Califor- 
nia, the  Land  of  Perpetual  Sunshine — ex- 
cept when  it  rains! 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


HOW"  DO   YOU  LIKE 
THE   CLIMATE? 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

How  Do  You  Like  the 
Climate? 

ONCE  upon  a  time  a  stranger  went 
to  Southern  California;  and  when 
he  was  asked  the  customary  ques- 
tion— to  wit:  "How  do  you  like  the  cli- 
mate?" he  said:  "No,  I  don't  like  it!"     So 
they  destroyed  him  on   the  spot.     I   have 
forgotten  now  whether  they  merely  hanged 
him  on  the  nearest  tree  or  burned  him  at 
the  stake;  but  they  destroyed  him  utterly 
and  hid  his  bones  in  an  unmarked  grave. 

History,  that  lying  jade,  records  that 
when  Balboa  first  saw  the  Pacific  he 
plunged  breast-deep  into  the  waves,  drew 
his  sword  and  waved  it  on  high,  probably 
using  for  that  purpose  the  Australian 
crawl  stroke;  and  then,  in  that  generous 
and  carefree  way  of  the  early  discoverers, 
claimed  the  ocean  and  all  points  west  in 


98   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  name  of  his  Catholic  Majesty,  Carlos 
the  Cutup,  or  Pedro  the  Impossible,  or 
whoever  happened  to  be  the  King  of  Spain 
for  the  moment.  Personal  investigation 
convinces  me  that  the  current  version  of 
the  above  incident  was  wrong. 

What  Balboa  did  first  was  to  state  that 
he  liked  the  climate  better  than  any  cli- 
mate he'd  ever  met;  was  perfectly  crazy 
about  it,  in  fact,  and  intended  to  sell  out 
back  East  and  move  West  just  as  soon  as 
he  could  get  word  home  to  his  folks;  after 
which,  still  following  the  custom  of  the 
country,  he  bought  a  couple  of  Navajo 
blankets  and  some  moccasins  with  blue 
beadwork  on  the  toes,  mailed  a  few  souve- 
nir postcards  to  close  friends,  and  had  his 
photograph  taken  showing  him  standing 
in  the  midst  of  the  tropical  verdure,  with 
a  freshly  picked  orange  in  his  hand.  And 
if  he  waved  his  sword  at  all  it  was  with 
the  idea  of  forcing  the  real-estate  agents 
to  stand  back  and  give  him  air.  I  am  sure 
that  these  are  the  correct  details,  because 
that  is  what  every  round-tripper  does  upon 
arriving  in  Southern  California;  and, 


Climate  99 

though  Balboa  finished  his  little  jaunt  of 
explorations  at  a  point  some  distance  below 
the  California  state  line,  he  was  still  in 
the  climate  belt.  Life  out  there  in  that 
fair  land  is  predicated  on  climate;  out 
there  climate  is  capitalized,  organized  and 
systematized.  Every  native  is  a  climate 
booster;  so  is  every  newcomer  as  soon  as 
he  has  stuck  round  long  enough  to  get  the 
climate  habit,  which  is  in  from  one  to 
three  days.  They  talk  climate;  they  think 
climate;  they  breathe  it  by  day;  they  snore 
it  by  night;  and  in  between  times  they  live 
on  it.  And  it  is  good  living,  too — espe- 
cially for  the  real-estate  people  and  the 
hotel-keepers. 

Southern  Californians  brag  of  their  cli- 
mate just  as  New  York  brags  of  its  wick- 
edness and  its  skyscrapers,  and  as  Rich- 
mond brags  of  its  cooking  and  its  war 
memories.  I  don't  blame  them  either;  the 
California  climate  is  worth  all  the  brags 
it  gets.  Back  East  in  the  wintertime  we 
have  weather;  out  in  Southern  California 
they  never  have  weather — nothing  but  cli- 
mate. For  hours  on  hours  a  native  will 


100  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

stand  outdoors,  with  his  hat  off  and  his 
head  thrown  back,  inhaling  climate  until 
you  can  hear  his  nostrils  smack.  And  after 
you've  been  on  the  spot  a  day  or  two  you're 
doing  the  same  thing  yourself,  for,  in  addi- 
tion to  being  salubrious,  the  California  cli- 
mate is  catching. 

Just  as  soon  as  you  cross  the  Arizona 
line  you  discover  that  you  have  entered 
the  climate  belt.  As  your  train  whizzes 
past  the  monument  that  marks  the  bound- 
ary an  earnest-minded  passenger  leans  over, 
taps  you  on  the  breastbone  and  informs 
you  that  you  are  now  in  California,  and 
wishes  to  know,  as  man  to  man,  whether 
you  don't  regard  the  climate  as  about  the 
niftiest  article  in  that  line  you  ever  experi- 
enced! At  the  hotel  the  young  lady  of  the 
telephone  switchboard,  who  calls  you  in 
the  morning,  plugs  in  the  number  of  your 
room;  and  when  you  drowsily  answer  the 
bell  she  informs  you  that  it  is  now  eight- 
thirty  and— What  do  you  think  of  the  cli- 
mate? The  boy  who  sells  you  a  paper 
and  the  youth  who  blackens  your  shoes 
both  show  solicitude  to  elicit  your  views 
upon  this  paramount  subject. 


Climate  103 

At  breakfast  the  waiter  finds  out — if  he 
can — how  you  like  the  climate  before  find- 
ing out  how  you  like  your  eggs.  When 
you  pay  your  bill  on  going  away  the  clerk 
somehow  manages  to  convey  the  impression 
that  the  charges  have  been  remarkably 
moderate  considering  what  you  have  en- 
joyed in  the  matter  of  climate.  Punching 
your  round-trip  ticket  on  the  train  starting 
East,  the  conductor  has  a  few  well-merited 
words  to  speak  on  behalf  of  the  climate 
of  the  Glorious  Southland,  the  same  being 
the  favorite  pet  name  of  the  resident  classes 
for  the  entire  lower  end  of  the  state  of 
California. 

Everybody  is  doing  it,  including  press, 
pulpit  and  general  public.  The  weather 
story — beg  pardon,  the  climate  story — is 
the  most  important  thing  in  the  daily  pa- 
per, especially  if  a  blizzard  has  oppor- 
tunely developed  back  East  somewhere  and 
is  available  for  purposes  of  comparison. 
At  Los  Angeles,  which  is  the  great  throb- 
bing heart  of  the  climate  belt,  I  went  as 
a  guest  to  a  stag  given  at  the  handsome 
new  clubhouse  of  a  secret  order  renowned 


104  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  continent  over  for  its  hospitality  and 
its  charities.  We  sat,  six  or  seven  hundred 
of  us,  in  a  big  assembly  hall,  smoked  cigars 
and  drank  light  drinks,  and  witnessed  some 
corking  good  sparring  bouts  by  non-profes- 
sional talent.  There  were  two  or  three 
ministers  present — fine,  alert  representa- 
tives of  the  modern  type  of  city  clergymen. 
When  eleven  o'clock  came  the  master  of 
ceremonies  announced  the  toast,  To  Our 
Absent  Brothers!  and  called  upon  one  of 
those  clergymen  to  respond  to  it. 

The  minister  climbed  up  on  the  platform 
— a  tall  man,  with  a  thick  crop  of  hair 
and  a  profile  as  clean  cut  as  a  cameo  and 
as  mobile  as  an  actor's,  the  face  of  a  born 
orator.  He  could  talk,  too,  that  preacher! 
In  language  that  was  poetic  without  being 
sloppy  he  paid  a  tribute  to  the  spirit  of 
fraternity  that  fairly  lifted  us  out  of  our 
chairs.  Every  man  there  was  touched,  I 
think — and  deeply  touched;  no  man  who 
believed  in  the  brotherhood  of  man, 
whether  he  practiced  it  or  not,  could  have 
listened  unmoved  to  that  speech.  He  spoke 
of  the  absent  ones.  Some  of  them  he  said 


Climate  105 

had  answered  the  last  rollcall,  and  some 
were  stretched  upon  the  bed  of  affliction, 
and  some  were  unavoidably  detained  by 
business  in  the  East;  and  he  intimated  that 
those  in  the  last  category  who  had  been 
away  for  as  long  as  three  weeks  wouldn't 
know  the  old  place  when  they  got  back! 
—Applause. 

This  naturally  brought  him  round  to  the 
subject  of  Los  Angeles  as  a  city  of  business 
and  homes.  He  pointed  out  its  marvelous 
growth — quoting  freely  from  the  latest  is- 
sue of  the  city  directory  and  other  reliable 
authorities  to  prove  his  figures;  he  made 
a  few  heartrousing  predictions  touching 
on  its  future  prospects,  as  tending  to  show 
that  in  a  year  or  less  San  Francisco  and 
other  ambitious  contenders  along  the  Coast 
would  be  eating  at  the  second  table;  he 
peopled  the  land  clear  back  to  the  moun- 
tains with  new  homes  and  new  neighbors; 
and  he  wound  up,  in  a  burst  of  vocal  glory, 
with  the  most  magnificent  testimonial  for 
the  climate  I  ever  heard  any  climate  get. 
Did  he  move  his  audience  then?  Oh,  but 
didn't  he  move  them,  though!  Along 


106  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

toward  the  close  of  the  third  minute  of 
uninterrupted  cheering  I  thought  the  roof 
was  gone. 

On  the  day  after  my  arrival  I  made  one 
very  serious  mistake;  in  fact,  it  came  near 
to  being  a  fatal  one.  I  met  a  lady,  and 
naturally  right  away  she  asked  me  the 
customary  opening  question.  Every  con- 
versation between  a  stranger  and  a  resident 
begins  according  to  that  formula.  Still  it 
seemed  to  me  an  inopportune  hour  for 
bringing  up  the  subject.  It  was  early  in 
March  and  the  day  was  one  of  those  days 
which  a  greenhorn  from  the  East  might 
have  been  pardoned  for  regarding  as  verg- 
ing upon  the  chilly — not  to  say  the  raw. 
Also,  it  seemed  to  be  raining.  I  say  it 
seemed  to  be  raining,  because  no  true 
Southern  Californian  would  admit  any 
actual  defects  in  the  climatic  arrangements. 
If  pressed  he  might  concede  that  ostensibly 
an  infinitesimal  percentage  of  precipita- 
tion was  descending,  and  that  apparently 
the  mercury  had  descended  a  notch  or  two 
in  the  tube.  Further  than  that,  in  the 
absence  of  the  official  reports,  he  would 
not  care  to  commit  himself. 


Climate  107 

You  never  saw  such  touching  loyalty 
anywhere!  Those  scoffing  neighbors  of 
Noah  who  kept  denying  on  there  was 
going  to  be  any  flood  right  up  to  the  mo- 
ment when  they  went  down  for  the  third 
time  were  rank  amateurs  alongside  a  sea- 
soned resident  of  Los  Angeles.  I  was 
newly  arrived,  however,  and  I  hadn't  ac- 
quired the  ethics  yet;  and,  besides,  I  had 
contracted  a  bad  cold  and  had  been  taking 
a  number  of  things  for  it  and  for  the 
moment  was,  as  you  might  say,  full  of 
conflicting  emulsions.  So,  in  reply  to  this 
lady's  question,  I  said  it  occurred  to  me 
that  the  prevalent  atmospheric  conditions 
might  for  the  nonce  stand  a  few  trifling 
alterations  without  any  permanent  ill  ef- 
fects. 

I  repeat  that  this  was  a  mistake;  for  this 
particular  lady  was  herself  a  recent  arrival, 
and  of  all  the  incurable  Californians,  the 
new  ones  are  the  most  incurable.  She  gave 
me  one  look — but  such  a  look!  From 
a  reasonably  solid  person  I  became  first  a 
pulp  and  then  a  pap;  and  then,  reversing 
the  processes  of  creation  as  laid  down  in 


108  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Genesis,  first  chapter,  and  first  to  fifth 
verses,  I  liquefied  and  turned  to  gas,  and 
darkness  covered  me,  and  I  became  void 
and  without  form,  and  passed  off  in  the 
form  of  a  vapor,  leaving  my  clothes  in- 
habited only  by  a  blushing  and  embar- 
rassed emptiness.  When  the  outraged  lady 
abated  the  intensity  of  her  scornful  gaze 
and  I  painfully  reassembled  my  astral 
body  out  of  space  and  projected  it  back 
into  my  earthly  tenement  again,  I  found 
I'd  shrunk  so  in  these  various  processes 
that  nothing  I  wore  fitted  me  any  longer. 

I  shall  never  commit  that  error  again. 
I  know  better  now.  If  I  were  a  con- 
demned criminal  about  to  die  on  a  gal- 
lows at  the  state  penitentiary,  I  would 
make  the  customary  announcement  touch- 
ing on  my  intention  of  going  straight  to 
Heaven — condemned  criminals  never  seem 
to  have  any  doubt  on  that  point — and  then 
in  conclusion  I  would  add  that  after  South- 
ern California,  I  knew  I  wouldn't  care  for 
the  climate  Up  There.  Then  I  would  step 
serenely  off  into  eternity,  secure  in  the  be- 
lief that,  no  matter  how  heinous  my  crime 


Climate  109 

might  have  been,  all  the  local  papers  would 
give  me  nice  obituary  notices. 

I'd  be  absolutely  sure  of  the  papers,  be- 
cause the  papers  are  the  last  to  concede 
that  there  ever  was  or  ever  will  be  a  flaw 
in  the  climate  anywhere.  In  a  certain  city 
out  on  the  Coast  there  is  one  paper  that 
refuses  even  to  admit  that  a  human  being 
can  actually  expire  while  breathing  the 
air  of  Southern  California.  It  won't  go 
so  far  as  to  say  that  anybody  has  died— 
"passed  away"  is  the  term  used.  You  read 
in  its  columns  that  Medulla  Oblongata,  the 
Mexican  who  was  kicked  in  the  head  by 
a  mule  last  Sunday  afternoon,  has  passed 
away  at  the  city  hospital;  or  that,  during 
yesterday's  misunderstanding  in  Chinatown 
between  the  Bing  Bangs  and  the  Ok  Lou- 
ies, two  Tong  men  were  shot  and  cut  in 
such  a  manner  that  they  practically  passed 
away  on  the  spot.  When  I  was  there  I 
traveled  all  one  day  over  the  route  of  an 
unprecedented  cold  snap  that  had  hap- 
pened along  a  little  earlier  and  mussed  up 
the  citrus  groves;  and,  though  I  will  not 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  orange  crop 


110  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

had  died  or  that  it  had  been  killed,  it  did 
look  to  me  as  though  it  had  passed  away 
to  a  considerable  extent 

This  sort  of  visitation,  however,  doesn't 
occur  often;  in  fact,  it  never  had  occurred 
before — and  the  chances  are  it  never  will 
occur  again.  Next  to  taxes  and  the  high 
cost  of  living,  I  judge  the  California  cli- 
mate to  be  about  the  most  dependable 
institution  we  have  in  this  country — yes, 
and  one  of  the  most  satisfactory,  too.  To 
its  climate  California  is  indebted  for  being 
the  most  extravagantly  beautiful  spot  I've 
seen  on  this  continent.  It  isn't  just  beau- 
tiful in  spots — it  is  beautiful  all  over;  it 
isn't  beautiful  in  a  sedate,  reserved  way- 
there  is  a  prodigal,  riotous,  abandoned 
spendthriftiness  to  its  beauty. 

I  don't  know  of  anything  more  wonder- 
ful than  an  automobile  ride  through  one 
of  the  fruit  valleys  in  the  Mission  coun- 
try. In  one  day's  travel — or,  at  most,  two 
—you  can  get  a  taste  of  all  the  things  that 
make  this  farthermost  corner  of  the  United 
States  at  once  so  diversified  and  so  indi- 
vidual— sky-piercing  mountain  and  mirage- 


Climate  111 

painted  desert;  seashore  and  upland;  ranch 
lands,  farm  lands  and  fruit  lands;  city  and 
town;  traces  of  our  oldest  civilization  and 
stretches  of  our  newest;  wilderness  and 
jungle  and  landscape  garden;  the  pines  of 
the  snows,  the  familiar  growths  of  the 
temperate  zone,  the  palms  of  the  tropics; 
and  finally — which  is  California's  own — 
the  Big  Trees.  All  day  you  may  ride  and 
never  once  will  your  eye  rest  upon  a  pic- 
ture that  is  commonplace  or  trumpery. 

Going  either  North  or  South,  your 
road  lies  between  mountains.  To  the  east- 
ward, shutting  out  the  deserts  from  this 
domain  of  everlasting  summer,  are  the 
Sierras — great  saw-edged  old  he-moun- 
tains, masculine  as  bulls  or  bucks,  all  rug- 
ged and  wrinkled,  bearded  with  firs  and 
pines  upon  their  jowls,  but  bald-headed 
and  hoar  with  age  atop  like  the  Prophets 
of  old.  But  the  mountains  of  the  Coast 
Range,  to  the  westward,  are  full-bosomed 
and  maternal,  mothering  the  valleys  up  to 
them;  and  their  round-uddered,  fecund 
slopes  are  covered  with  softest  green.  Only 
when  you  come  closer  to  them  you  see 


112  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

that  the  garments  on  their  breasts  are  not 
silky-smooth  as  they  looked  at  a  distance, 
but  shirred  and  gored,  gathered  and 
smocked.  I  suppose  even  a  lady  moun- 
tain never  gets  too  old  to  follow  the 
fashions! 

Now  you  pass  an  orchard  big  enough  to 
make  a  hundred  of  your  average  Eastern 
orchards;  and  if  it  be  of  apples  or  plums 
or  cherries,  and  the  time  be  springtime, 
it  is  all  one  vast  white  bridal  bouquet;  but 
if  it  be  of  almonds  or  peaches  the  whole 
land,  maybe  for  miles  on  end,  blazes  with 
a  pink  flame  that  is  the  pinkest  pink  in 
the  world — pinker  than  the  heart  of  a  ripe 
watermelon;  pinker  than  the  inside  of  a 
blond  cow. 

Here  is  a  meadowland  of  purest,  deep- 
est green;  and  flung  across  it,  like  a  streak 
of  sunshine  playing  hooky  from  Heaven,  is 
a  slash  of  wild  yellow  poppies.  There, 
upon  a  hillside,  stands  a  clump  of  gnarly, 
dwarfed  olives,  making  you  think  of  Bible 
times  and  the  Old  Testament.  Or  else  it 
is  a  great  range,  where  cattle  by  thousands 
feed  upon  the  slopes.  Or  a  crested  ridge, 


Climate  113 

upon  which  the  gum  trees  stand  up  in  long 
aisles,  sorrowful  and  majestic  as  the  fune- 
real groves  of  the  ancient  Greeks — that  is, 
provided  it  was  the  ancient  Greeks  who 
had  the  funereal  groves. 

Or,  best  of  all  and  most  striking  in  its 
contrasts,  you  will  see  a  hill  all  green, 
with  a  nap  on  it  like  a  family  album;  and 
right  on  the  top  of  it  an  old,  crumbly  gray 
mission,  its  cross  gleaming  against  the  sky- 
line; and,  down  below,  a  modern  town, 
with  red  roofs  and  hipped  windows,  its 
houses  buried  to  their  eaves  in  palms  and 
giant  rose  bushes,  and  huge  climbing  ge- 
raniums, and  all  manner  of  green  tropical 
growths  that  are  Nature's  own  Christmas 
trees,  with  the  red-and-yellow  dingle-dan- 
gles growing  upon  them.  Or  perhaps  it 
is  a  gorge  choked  with  the  enormous  red- 
woods, each  individual  tree  with  a  trunk 
like  the  Washington  Monument.  And,  if 
you  are  only  as  lucky  as  we  were,  up 
overhead,  across  the  blue  sky,  will  be  drift- 
ing a  hundred  fleecy  clouds,  one  behind 
the  other,  like  woolly  white  sheep  grazing 
upon  the  meadows  of  the  firmament. 


114  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Everywhere  the  colors  are  splashed  on 
with  a  barbaric,  almost  a  theatrical,  touch. 
It's  a  regular  backdrop  of  a  country;  its 
scenery  looks  as  though  it  belonged  on  a 
stage — as  though  it  should  be  painted  on 
a  curtain.  You  almost  expect  to  see  a 
chorus  of  comic-opera  brigands  or  a  bevy 
of  stage  milkmaids  come  trooping  out  of 
the  wings  any  minute.  Who  was  the  libel- 
ous  wretch  who  said  that  the  flowers  of 
California  had  no  perfume  and  the  birds 
there  had  no  song?  Where  we  passed 
through  tangled  woods  the  odors  distilled 
from  the  wild  flowers  by  the  sun's  warmth 
were  often  almost  suffocating  in  their 
sweetness;  and  in  a  yellow-tufted  bush 
on  the  lawn  at  Coronado  I  came  upon  a 
mocking-bird  singing  in  a  way  to  make 
his  brother  minstrel  of  Mobile  or  Savan- 
nah feel  like  applying  for  admission  to  a 
school  of  expression  and  learning  the  sing- 
ing business  all  over  again. 

At  the  end  of  the  valley — top  end  or 
bottom  end  as  the  case  may  be — you  come 
to  a  chain  of  lesser  mountains,  dropped 
down  across  your  path  like  a  trailing  wing 


>  o 

5$ 

>  V 

r  Jo 
«  ° 

M  » 

w  S 

-J  c 

>  S 

s| 

>  X) 


Climate  11 7 

of  the  Indians'  fabled  thunder-bird,  vainly 
trying  to  shut  you  out  from  the  next  valley. 
You  climb  the  divide  and  run  through  the 
pass,  with  a  brawling  river  upon  one  side 
and  tall  cliffs  upon  the  other;  and  then 
all  of  a  sudden  the  hills  magically  part 
and  you  are  within  sight — almost  within 
touch — of  the  ocean;  for  in  this  favored 
land  the  mountains  come  right  down  to 
the  sea  and  the  sea  comes  right  up  to  the 
mountains.  It  may  be  upon  a  tiny  bay  that 
you  have  emerged,  with  the  meadows  slop- 
ing straight  to  tidemark,  and  out  beyond 
the  wild  fowl  feeding  by  the  kelp  beds. 

Or  perhaps  you  have  come  out  upon  a 
ragged,  rugged  headland,  crowned  belike 
with  a  single  wind-twisted  tree,  grotesquely 
suggesting  a  frizzly  chicken;  and  away 
below,  straight  and  sheer,  are  the  rocks 
rising  out  of  the  water  like  the  jaws  of  a 
mangle.  Down  there  in  that  ginlike  reef 
Neptune  is  forever  washing  out  his  shirt 
in  a  smother  of  foamy  lather.  And  he  has 
spilled  his  bluing  pot,  too — else  how  could 
all  the  sea  be  so  blue?  On  the  outermost 
rocks  the  sea-lions  have  stretched  them- 


118  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

selves,  looking  like  so  many  overgrown 
slugs;  and  they  lie  for  hours  and  sun 
themselves  and  bellow — or,  at  least,  I  am 
told  they  do  so  on  occasion.  There  was 
unfortunately  no  bellowing  going  on  the 
day  I  was  there. 

.The  unearthly  beauty  of  the  whole  thing 
overpowers  you.  The  poet  that  lives  in 
nearly  every  human  soul  rouses  within  you 
and  you  feel  like  withdrawing  to  yon  dense 
grove  or  yon  peaked  promontory  to  com- 
mune with  Nature.  But  be  advised  in 
season.  Restrain  yourself!  Carefully  re- 
frain! Do  not  do  so!  Because  out  from 
under  a  rock  somewhere  will  crawl  a  real- 
estate  agent  to  ask  you  how  you  like  the 
climate  and  take  a  dollar  down  as  first 
payment  on  a  fruit  ranch,  or  a  suburban 
lot,  or  a  seaside  villa — or  something. 

Climate  did  it  and  he  can  prove  it. 
Only  he  doesn't  have  to  prove  it — you 
admit  it.  I  had  never  seen  the  Mediter- 
ranean when  I  went  West;  but  I  saw  the 
cypresses  of  Del  Monte,  and  the  redwood 
grove  in  the  canon  just  below  Harry  Leon 
Wilson's  place,  down  past  Carmel-by-the- 


Climate  119 

Sea ;  and  that  was  sufficient.  I  had  no  burn- 
ing yearning  to  see  Naples  and  die,  as  the 
poet  suggested.  I  felt  that  I  would  rather 
see  Monterey  Bay  again  on  a  bright  March 
day  and  live  I 

And  for  all  of  this — for  fruit,  flowers 
and  scenery,  for  real-estate  agents,  and  for 
a  race  of  the  most  persistent  boosters  under 
the  sun — the  climate  is  responsible.  Cli- 
mate advertised  is  responsible  for  the  rush 
of  travel  from  the  East  that  sets  in  with 
the  coming  of  winter  and  lasts  until  well 
into  the  following  spring;  and  climate  real- 
ized is  responsible  for  the  string  of  tourist 
hotels  that  dot  the  Coast  all  along  from 
just  below  San  Francisco  to  the  Mexican 
border. 

Both  externally  and  internally  the  ma- 
jority of  these  hotels  are  singularly  alike. 
Mainly  they  are  rambling  frame  structures 
done  in  a  modified  Spanish  architecture- 
late  Spanish  crossed  on  Early  Peoria — with 
a  lobby  so  large  that,  loafing  there,  you 
feel  as  though  you  were  in  the  waiting-room 
of  the  Grand  Central  Terminal,  and  with 
a  dining  room  about  the  size  of  the  state 


120  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

of  Rhode  Island,  and  a  sun  parlor  that  has 
windows  all  round,  so  as  to  give  its  occu- 
pants the  aspect,  when  viewed  from  with- 
out, of  being  inmates  of  an  aquarium;  and 
a  gorgeous  tea  room  done  in  the  style  of 
one  of  the  French  Louies — Louie  the 
Limit,  I  guess.  There  are  some  notable 
exceptions  to  the  rule — some  of  the  places 
have  pleasing  individualities  of  their  own, 
but  most  of  them  were  cut  off  the  same 
pattern.  Likewise  the  bulk  of  their  winter 
patrons  are  cut  off  the  same  pattern. 

The  average  Eastern  tourist  is  a  funny 
biped  anyhow,  and  he  is  at  his  funniest 
out  in  California.  Living  along  the  East- 
ern seaboard  are  a  large  number  of  well- 
to-do  people  who  barken  not  to  the  slogan 
of  See  America  First,  because  many  of 
them  cannot  see  America  at  any  price; 
they  can  just  barely  recognize  its  exist- 
ence as  a  suitable  place  for  making  money, 
but  no  place  for  spending  it.  What  makes 
life  worth  living  to  them  is  the  fact  that 
Europe  is  distant  only  a  four-day  run  by 
the  four-day  boat,  the  same  being  known 
as  a  four-day  boat  because  only  four  days 


Climate  121 

are  required  for  the  run  between  Daunt's 
Rock  and  Ambrose  Channel,  which  is  a 
very  convenient  arrangement  for  deep-sea 
divers  and  long-distance  swimmers  desir- 
ing to  get  on  at  Daunt's  Rock  and  get  off 
in  Ambrose  Channel,  but  slightly  extend- 
ing the  journey  for  passengers  who  are  less 
amphibious  by  nature. 

These  people  constitute  one  breed  of 
Eastern  tourists.  There  is  the  other  breed, 
who  are  willing  to  see  America  provided 
it  is  made  over  to  conform  with  the  ac- 
cepted Eastern  model.  Those  who  can 
afford  the  expense  go  to  Florida  in  the 
winter;  but  it  requires  at  least  a  million  in 
small  change  to  feel  at  home  in  that  set- 
ting, and  so  a  good  many  who  haven't  quite 
a  million  to  spare,  head  for  Southern  Cali- 
fornia as  the  next  best  spot  on  the  map. 
Arriving  there,  they  endeavor  to  reproduce 
on  as  exact  a  scale  as  possible  the  life  of 
the  ultra  fashionable  Florida  resorts;  the 
result  is  what  a  burlesque  manager  would 
call  a  Number  Two  Palm  Beach  company 
playing  the  Western  Wheel. 

Up   and  down   the   Coast   these   tourists 


122  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

traipse  for  months  on  end,  spending  a  week 
here  and  two  weeks  there,  and  doing  the 
same  things  in  the  same  way  at  each  new 
stopping  place.  You  meet  them,  part  from 
them,  and  meet  them  again  at  the  next 
stand,  until  the  monotony  of  it  grows  mad- 
dening; and  always  they  are  intently  fol- 
lowing the  routine  you  saw  them  following 
last  week  or  the  week  before,  or  the  week 
before  that.  They  have  traveled  clear 
across  the  continent  to  practice  such  diver- 
sions as  they  might  have  had  within  two 
hours'  ride  of  Philadelphia  or  New  York; 
and  they  are  going  to  practice  them,  too, 
or  know  the  reason  why. 

Of  course  they  are  not  all  constituted 
this  way;  I  am  speaking  now  of  the  im- 
pression created  in  California  by  tourists 
in  bulk.  They  decline  to  do  the  things 
for  which  this  country  is  best  adapted; 
they  will  not  see  the  things  for  which  it  is 
most  famous.  Few  of  them  take  the  rough- 
ing trips  up  into  the  mountains;  fewer  still 
visit  the  desert  country.  All  about  them 
the  tremendous  engineering  contracts  that 
have  made  this  land  a  commercial  Arabian 


Climate  123 

Nights'  Entertainment  are  being  carried 
out — the  mighty  reclamation  schemes;  the 
irrigation  projects;  the  damming  up  of 
canons  and  the  shoveling  away  of  moun- 
tains— but  your  average  group  of  Eastern 
tourists  pass  these  by  with  dull  and  glazed 
eyes,  their  souls  being  bound  up  in  the 
desire  to  reach  the  next  hotel  on  the  route 
with  the  least  possible  waste  of  time,  and 
take  up  the  routine  where  it  was  broken 
off  at  the  last  hotel. 

They  tennis  and  they  golf,  and  some  go 
horseback  riding  and  some  take  drives; 
and  at  one  or  two  places  there  is  polo  in 
the  season.  Likewise,  in  accordance  with 
the  rules  laid  down  by  the  Palm  Beach 
authorities,  the  women  change  clothes  as 
often  as  possible  during  the  course  of  the 
day;  and  in  the  evening  all  hands  appear 
in  full  dress  for  dinner,  the  same  being 
very  wearing  on  men  and  very  pleasing 
to  women — that  is,  all  of  them  do  except 
a  few  obstinate  persons  who  defy  conven- 
tion and  remain  comfortable.  After  dinner 
some  of  the  younger  people  dance  and 
some  of  the  older  ones  play  bridge;  but 


124  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  vast  majority  sit  round — and  then  sit 
round  some  more  and  wonder  whether 
eleven  o'clock  will  ever  come  so  they  can 
go  to  bed! 

A  good  many  take  the  wrong  kind  of 
clothes  out  there  with  them.  They  have 
read  in  the  advertisements  that  Southern 
California  is  a  land  of  perpetual  balm, 
where  flowers  bloom  the  year  round;  and 
they  pack  their  trunks  with  the  lightest 
and  thinnest  wearing  apparel  they  own, 
which  is  a  mistake.  The  natives  know 
better  than  that.  The  all-wool  sweater  is 
the  national  garment  of  the  Western  Coast 
—both  sexes  and  all  ages  go  to  it  unani- 
mously. Experience  proves  it  the  ideal 
thing  to  wear;  for  in  Southern  California 
in  the  winter  it  is  never  really  hot  in  the 
sun  and  it  is  often  exceedingly  cool  in  the 
shade.  Besides,  there  is  a  sea  wind  that 
blows  pretty  regularly  and  which  makes 
a  specialty  of  working  through  the  cran- 
nies in  a  silk  shirt  or  a  lingerie  blouse. 
The  chilliest,  most  pallid-looking  things  I 
ever  saw  in  my  life  were  a  pair  of  white 
linen  trousers  I  found  in  the  top  tray  of 


Climate  125 

my  trunk  when  I  reached  the  extreme 
lower  end  of  California.  I  had  to  cover 
them  under  two  blankets  and  a  bedspread 
that  night  to  keep  the  poor  things  from 
freezing  stiff. 

The  medium-weight  garments  an  East- 
erner wears  between  seasons  are  admirably 
suited  for  the  West  Coast  in  the  winter; 
but  the  guileless  tenderfoot  who  is  making 
his  first  trip  to  California  usually  doesn't 
learn  this  until  it  is  too  late  If  he  is  wise 
he  studies  out  the  situation  on  his  arrival, 
and  thereafter  takes  his  overcoat  with  him 
when  he  goes  riding  and  his  sweater  when 
he  goes  walking;  but  there  are  many  others 
who  will  be  summer  boys  and  girls  though 
they  perish  in  the  attempt. 

At  Coronado  I  witnessed  a  mighty  piti- 
able sight.  It  was  a  cool  day,  cooler  than 
ordinary  even,  with  a  stiff  wind  blowing 
skeiny  shreds  of  sea  fog  in  off  the  gray 
ocean;  and  a  beating  rain  was  falling  at 
frequent  intervals.  The  veranda  was  full 
of  Easterners  trying  to  look  comfortable  in 
summer  clothes  and  not  succeeding,  while 
the  road  in  front  was  dotted  with  Western- 


126  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

ers,  comfortable  and  cozy  in  their  thick 
sweaters.  There  emerged  upon  the  wind- 
swept porch  a  youth  who  would  have  been 
a  sartorial  credit  to  himself  on  a  Florida 
beach  in  February  or  upon  a  Jersey  board- 
walk in  August;  but  he  did  not  coincide 
with  the  atmospheric  scheme  of  things  on  a 
rainy  March  day  down  in  Southern  Cali- 
fornia. 

To  begin  with,  he  was  a  spindly  and 
fragile  person,  with  a  knobby  forehead  and 
a  fade-away  face.  Dressed  in  close-fitting 
black  and  turned  sidewise,  with  his  profile 
to  you,  he  would  instantly  suggest  a  neatly 
rolled  umbrella  with  a  plain  bone  handle. 
But  he  was  not  dressed  in  black;  he  was 
dressed  in  white — all  white,  like  a  bride 
or  a  bandaged  thumb;  white  silk  shirt; 
white  flannel  coat,  with  white  pearl  but- 
tons spangled  freely  over  it;  white  trou- 
sers; white  Panama  hat;  white  socks;  white 
buckskin  shoes,  with  white  rubber  soles  on 
them.  He  was,  in  short,  all  white  except 
his  face,  which  was  a  pinched,  wan  blue, 
and  his  nose,  which  was  a  suffused  and 
chilly  red.  If  my  pencil  had  had  an  eraser 


Climate  129 

on  it  I'm  satisfied  I  could  have  backed  him 
up  against  the  wall  and  rubbed  him  right 
out;  but  he  bore  up  splendidly. 

It  was  plain  he  felt  that  he  was  properly 
dressed  for  the  time,  the  place  and  the  oc- 
casion; and  to  him  that  was  ample  compen- 
sation for  his  suffering.  I  heard  afterward 
that  he  lost  three  sets  of  tennis  and  had  a 
congestive  chill — all  in  the  course  of  the 
same  afternoon. 

The  unconquerable  determination  of  the 
Eastern  tourist  to  have  Southern  Califor- 
nia conform  to  his  back-home  standards  is 
responsible  for  the  fact  that  many  of  the 
tourist  hotels  out  there  are  not  so  typical 
of  the  West  as  they  might  be — and  as  in  my 
humble  judgment  they  should  be — but  are 
as  Eastern  as  it  is  possible  to  make  them — 
Eastern  in  cuisine,  in  charges  and  in  their 
operating  schedules.  Here,  again,  there 
are  some  notable  exceptions. 

In  the  supposedly  wilder  sections  of  the 
West,  lying  between  the  Rockies  and  the 
Sierras,  the  situation  is  different.  It  is 
notably  different  in  Arizona  and  New 
Mexico  in  the  South,  and  in  Utah,  Mon- 


130  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

tana  and  Wyoming  in  the  North.  There 
the  person  who  serves  you  for  hire  is 
neither  your  menial  nor  your  superior; 
whereas  in  the  East  he  or  she  is  nearly  al- 
ways one  or  the  other,  and  sometimes  both 
at  once.  This  particular  type  of  West- 
erner doesn't  patronize  you;  neither  does 
he  cringe  to  you  in  expectation  of  a  tip. 
He  gives  you  the  best  he  has  in  stock, 
meanwhile  retaining  his  own  self-respect 
and  expecting  you  to  do  the  same.  He  en- 
nobles and  dignifies  personal  service. 

Out  on  the  Coast,  however — or  at  least 
at  several  of  the  big  hotels  out  on  the 
Coast — the  system,  thanks  to  Eastern  in- 
fluence, has  been  changed.  The  whole 
scheme  is  patterned  after  the  accepted 
New  York  model.  The  charges  for  small 
services  are  as  exorbitant  as  in  New  York, 
and  the  iniquities  of  the  tipping  system  are 
worked  out  as  amply  and  as  wickedly  as 
in  the  city  where  they  originated. 

Somebody  with  a  taste  for  statistics  fig- 
ured it  out  once  that  if  a  man  owned  a 
three-dollar  hat  and  wore  it  for  two 
months,  lunching  every  day  at  a  New  York 


Climate  131 


cafe,  and  if  he  dined  four  nights  a  week  at 
a  New  York  restaurant  and  attended  the 
theater  twice  a  week,  his  hat  at  the  end  of 
those  two  months  would  cost  him  in  tips 
eighteen  dollars  and  seventy  cents!  No, 
on  second  thought,  I  guess  it  was  a  pair  of 
earmuffs  that  would  have  cost  him  eigh- 
teen-seventy. 

A  hat  would  have  been  more. 

It  would  be  more  in  Southern  Califor- 
nia— I'm  sure  of  that.  There  the  tipping 
habit  is  made  more  expensive  by  reason  of 
the  prevalent  spirit  of  Western  generosity. 
The  born  Westerner  never  has  got  used  to 
dimes  and  nickels.  To  him  quarters  are 
still  chicken-feed  and  a  half  dollar  is  small 
change.  So  the  tips  are  just  as  numerous 
as  in  New  York  and  for  the  same  service 
they  are  frequently  larger. 

A  lot  has  been  said  and  written  about 
the  marvelous  palms  of  Lower  California 
and  a  lot  more  might  be  said — for  they  are 
outstretched  everywhere;  and  if  you  don't 
cross  them  with  silver  at  frequent  intervals 
you  would  do  well  to  try  camping  out  for 
a  change.  Likewise  a  cursory  glance  at  the 


132  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

prices  on  some  of  the  menus  is  calculated 
to  make  a  New  Yorker  homesick — they're 
so  familiarly  and  unreasonably  steep.  And 
frequently  the  dishes  you  get  aren't  typical 
of  the  country;  they  are — thanks  again  be 
to  the  Easterner — mostly  transplanted  imi- 
tations of  the  concoctions  of  the  Broadway 
and  the  Fifth  Avenue  chefs. 

There  are  compensations,  though.  There 
are  some  hotels  that  are  operated  on  admir- 
ably different  lines,  and  there  are  abundant 
opportunities  for  escaping  altogether  from 
hotel  life  and  seeing  this  Land  of  the  Liv- 
ing Backdrop  where  it  is  untainted  and 
unspoiled;  where  the  hills  are  clothed  in 
green  and  yellow;  where  little  Spanishy 
looking  towns  nestle  below  the  Missions, 
and  the  mocking-birds  sing,  and  the  real- 
estate  boomer  leaps  from  crag  to  crag, 
sounding  his  flute-like  note.  And  don't 
forget  the  climate!  But  that  is  unneces- 
sary advice.  You  won't  have  a  chance  to 
forget  it — not  for  a  minute  you  won't! 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


IN  THE  HAUNT  OF  THE 
NATIVE  SON 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

In  the 
Haunt  of  the  Native  Son 

THERE  are  various  ways  of  entering 
San    Francisco,    and    the    traveling 
general  passenger  agent  of  any  one 
of  half  a  dozen  trunklines  stands  ready  to 
prove  to  you — absolutely  beyond  the  perad- 
venture  of  a  doubt— that  his  particular  way 
is  incomparably  the  best  one;   but  to  my 
mind  a  very  satisfactory  way  is  to  go  over- 
land from  Monterey. 

The  route  we  followed  led  us  lengthwise 
through  the  wonderful  Santa  Clara  coun- 
try, straight  up  a  wide  box  plait  of  valley 
tucked  in  between  an  ornamental  double 
ruffle  of  mountains.  I  suppose  if  we  passed 
one  ranch  we  passed  a  thousand — cattle 
ranches,  fruit  ranches,  hen  ranches,  chicken 
ranches,  bee  ranches — all  the  known  varie- 
ties and  subvarieties. 


136   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

In  California  you  mighty  soon  get  out  of 
the  habit  of  speaking  of  farms;  for  there 
are  no  farms — only  ranches.  The  particu- 
lar ranch  to  which  you  have  reference  may 
be  a  ten-thousand-acre  ranch,  where  they 
raise  enough  beef  critters  to  feed  a  standing 
army,  or  it  may  be  a  half-acre  ranch,  where 
somebody  is  trying  to  make  things  home- 
like and  happy  for  eight  hens  and  a 
rooster;  but  a  ranch  it  always  is,  and  usu- 
ally it  is  a  model  of  its  kind,  too.  The 
birds  in  California  do  not  build  nests. 
They  build  ranches. 

Most  of  the  way  along  the  Santa  Clara 
Valley  our  tires  glided  upon  an  arrow- 
straight,  unbelievably  smooth  stretch  of 
magnificent  automobile  road,  which  - 
when  it  is  completed — will  extend  with- 
out a  break  from  the  Oregon  line  to  the 
Mexican  line,  and  will  be  the  finest,  cost- 
liest, best  thoroughfare  to  be  found  within 
the  boundaries  of  any  state  of  the  Union, 
that  being  the  scale  upon  which  they  work 
out  their  public-utility  plans  in  the  West. 

Eventually  the  road  changes  into  a  paved 
and  curbed  avenue,  lined  with  seemingly 


The  Native  Son       137 

unending  aisles  of  the  tall  gum  trees.  Soon 
you  begin  to  skitter  past  the  suburban  vil- 
las of  rich  men,  set  back  in  ornamental 
landscape  effects  of  green  lawns  and  among 
tropical  verdure.  You  emerge  from  this 
into  a  gently  rolling  plateau,  upon  which 
flower  gardens  of  incomparable  richness 
are  interspersed  with  the  homely  structures 
that  inevitably  mark  the  proximity  of  any 
great  city.  There,  rising  ahead  of  you, 
are  the  foothills  that  protect,  upon  its  land- 
ward side,  San  Francisco,  the  city  that  has 
produced  more  artists,  more  poets,  more 
writers,  more  actors,  more  pugilists,  more 
sudden  millionaires — cries  of  Question! 
Question!  from  the  Pittsburgh  delegation 
—more  good  fiction  and  more  Native  Sons 
than  any  community  in  the  Western  Hem- 
isphere. 

You  aren't  there  yet,  however.  Next 
you  round  a  sloping  shoulder  of  a  hill  and 
slide  down  into  a  shore  road,  with  the  beat- 
ing, creaming  surf  on  one  side,  and  on  the 
other  a  long  succession  of  the  sort  of  archi- 
tectural triumphs  that  have  made  Coney 
Island  famous.  You  negotiate  another 


138  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

small  ridge  and  there,  suddenly  spread  out 
before  you,  is  the  Golden  Gate,  with  the 
city  itself  cuddled  in  between  the  ocean 
and  the  friendly  protecting  mountains  at  its 
back.  The  Seal  Rocks  are  there,  and  the 
Cliff  House,  and  the  Presidio,  and  all. 
New  York  has  a  wonderful  harbor  en- 
trance; Nature  did  some  of  it  and  man  did 
the  rest.  San  Francisco  has  an  even  more 
wonderful  one,  and  the  hand  of  man  did 
not  need  to  touch  it.  When  Nature  got 
through  with  it,  it  was  a  complete  and  sat- 
isfactory job. 

The  first  convincing  impression  the  new- 
comer gets  of  San  Francisco  is  that  here  is 
a  permanent  city — a  city  that  has  found 
itself,  has  achieved  its  own  personality, 
and  is  satisfied  with  it.  Perhaps,  because 
they  are  growing  so  fast,  certain  of  the 
other  Coast  cities  strike  the  casual  observer 
as  having  just  been  put  up.  I  was  told 
that  a  man  who  lives  on  a  residential  street 
of  San  Diego  has  to  mark  his  house  with 
chalk  when  he  leaves  of  a  morning  in  or- 
der to  know  it  when  he  gets  home  at  night. 
A  real-estate  agent  told  me  so,  and  I  do 


The  Native  Son       139 

not  think  a  Southern  California  real-estate 
agent  would  deceive  anybody — more  par- 
ticularly a  stranger  from  the  East.  So  it 
must  be  true.  And  Los  Angeles'  main 
business  district  is  like  a  transverse  slice 
chopped  out  of  the  middle  of  Manhattan 
Island.  It  isn't  Western.  It  is  typically 
New  Yorky — as  alive  as  New  York  and  as 
handsomely  done.  You  can  almost  imag- 
ine you  are  at  the  corner  of  Broadway  and 
Forty-second  Street. 

San  Francisco,  it  seems  to  me,  isn't  like 
any  city  on  earth  except  San  Francisco. 
Once  you  get  away  from  the  larger  hotels, 
which  are  accurate  copies  of  the  metro- 
politan article  of  the  East,  even  to  the 
afternoon  tea-fighting  melees  of  the  women, 
you  find  yourself  in  a  city  that  is  abso- 
lutely individual  and  distinctive.  It  im- 
presses its  originality  upon  you;  it  presents 
itself  with  an  air  of  having  been  right  there 
from  the  beginning — and  this,  too,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  ravages  of  the  great  fire 
are  still  visible  in  old  cellar  excavations 
and  piles  of  debris.  Practically  every 
building  in  the  main  part  of  the  town  has 


140  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

been  rebuilt  within  eight  years  and  is  still 
new.  The  scars  are  fresh,  but  the  spirit  is 
old  and  abides. 

This  same  essence  of  individuality  tinc- 
tures the  lives,  the  manners  and  the  con- 
versations of  the  people.  They  do  not  strike 
you  as  being  Westerners  or  as  being  trans- 
planted Easterners;  they  are  San  Francis- 
cans. Even  when  all  other  signs  fail  you 
may,  nevertheless,  instantly  discern  cer- 
tain unfailing  traits — to  wit,  as  follows: 
i — A  San  Franciscan  shudders  with  ill- 
concealed  horror  when  anybody  refers  to 
his  beloved  city  as  Frisco — which  nobody 
ever  does  unless  it  be  a  raw  alien  from  the 
other  side  of  the  continent;  2 — He  does 
not  brag  of  the  climate  with  that  con- 
stancy which  provides  his  neighbor  of 
Los  Angeles  a  never-failing  topic  of  con- 
genial conversation;  and  3 — He  assures 
you  with  a  regretful  sighing  note  in  his 
voice  that  the  old-time  romance  disap- 
peared with  the  destruction  of  the  old-time 
buildings,  the  old-time  resorts  and  the  old- 
time  neighborhoods. 

It  has  been  my  experience  that  romance 


The  Native  Son       141 

is  always  in  the  past  tense  anyhow.  Ro- 
mance is  a  commodity  that  was  extremely 
plentiful  last  week  or  last  year  or  last  cen- 
tury, but  for  the  moment  they  are  entirely 
out  of  it,  and  can't  say  with  any  degree  of 
certainty  when  a  fresh  stock  will  be  com- 
ing in.  This  is  largely  true  of  all  the  for- 
merly romantic  cities  I  know  anything 
about,  and  it  appears  to  be  especially  true 
of  San  Francisco.  Romance  invariably 
acquires  added  value  after  it  has  vanished; 
in  this  respect  it  is  very  much  like  a  his- 
tory-making epoch.  An  epoch  rarely 
seems  to  create  any  great  amount  of  excite- 
ment when  it  is  in  process  of  epoching,  or 
at  least  the  excitement  is  only  temporary 
and  soon  abates.  Afterward  we  look  back 
upon  it  with  a  feeling  of  longing,  but  when 
it  was  actually  coming  to  pass  we  took  it — 
after  the  first  shock  of  surprise — as  a  mat- 
ter of  course. 

No  doubt  our  children  and  our  chil- 
dren's children  will  read  in  the  text-books 
that  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury was  distinguished  as  the  age  when  the 
auto  and  tango  came  into  use,  and  people 


142  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

learned  to  fly,  and  grown  men  wore  brace- 
let watches  and  carried  their  handker- 
chiefs up  their  cuffs;  and  they  will  repine 
because  they,  too,  did  not  live  in  those 
stirring  times.  But  we  of  the  present  gen- 
eration who  recently  passed  through  these 
experiences  have  already  accepted  them 
without  undue  excitement,  just  as  our  fore- 
fathers in  their  day  accepted  the  submarine 
cable,  the  galvanic  battery  and  the  congress 
gaiter. 

Age  and  antiquity  give  an  added  value 
to  everything  except  an  egg.  In  my  own 
case  I  know  how  it  was  with  regard  to  the 
Egyptian  scarab.  For  years  I  felt  that  I 
could  never  rest  satisfied  until  I  had  gone 
to  Egypt  and  had  personally  broken  into 
the  tomb  of  some  sleeping  Pharaoh  or  some 
crumbly  old  Rameses,  and  with  my  own 
hands  had  ravished  from  it  a  mummified 
specimen  of  that  fabled  beetle  which  the 
ancients  worshiped  and  buried  with  them 
in  their  tombs.  But  not  long  ago  I  made 
the  discovery  that,  in  coloring,  habits,  cus- 
toms and  general  walk  and  conversation, 
the  scarab  of  the  Egyptians  was  none 


The  Native  Son       145 

other  than  the  common  tumblebug  of  the 
Southern  dirt  roads.  Right  there  was 
where  I  lost  interest  in  the  scarab.  He 
was  no  novelty  to  me — not  after  that  he 
wasn't.  As  a  boy  I  had  known  him  in- 
timately. 

So,  when  I  was  repeatedly  assured  that 
the  old-time  romance  had  vanished  from 
San  Francisco,  and  with  it  the  atmosphere 
that  bred  Bohemianism  and  developed  lit- 
erature and  art,  and  kept  alive  the  spirit  of 
the  Forty-niner  times,  and  all  that,  I  made 
my  own  allowances.  Those  who  mourned 
for  the  fire-blasted  past  may  have  been 
right,  in  a  measure.  Certainly  the  old-time 
Chinatown  isn't  there  any  more — or,  at 
any  rate,  isn't  there  in  its  physical  aspects. 
The  rebuilt  Chinatown  of  San  Francisco, 
though  infinitely  larger,  isn't  so  picturesque 
really  or  so  Chinesey  looking  as  New 
York's  Chinatown. 

I  did  not  dare  to  give  utterance  to  this 
treasonable  statement  until  I  was  well  away 
from  San  Francisco,  but  it  is  true  all  the 
same.  I  cruised  the  shores  of  the  far- 
famed  and  much-written-about  Barbary 


146  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Coast;  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  in  its  dun- 
colored  tiresomeness  and  in  its  miserable 
transparent  counterfeit  of  joy  it  was  up  to 
the  general  metropolitan  average — that  it 
was  just  as  tiresome  and  humdrum  as  the 
avowedly  wicked  section  of  any  city  al- 
ways "is. 

However,  I  was  told  that  I  had  arrived 
just  one  week  too  late  to  see  the  Barbary 
Coast  at  its  best — meaning  by  that  its 
worst;  for  during  the  week  before  the  po- 
lice, growing  virtuous,  had  put  the  crusher 
on  the  dance-halls  and  the  hobble  on  the 
tango-twisters.  Even  the  place  where  the 
turkey  trot  originated — a  place  that  would 
naturally  be  a  shrine  to  a  New  Yorker- 
was  trotless  and  quiet — in  mourning  for  its 
firstborn. 

The  so-called  French  restaurants,  which 
for  years  gave  an  unwholesome  savor  to 
certain  phases  of  San  Francisco  life,  had 
likewise  been  sterilized  and  purified.  I 
wished  I  might  have  got  there  before  the 
housecleaning  took  place;  but,  even  so,  I 
should  probably  have  been  disappointed. 
What  makes  the  vice  of  ancient  Babylon 


The  Native  Son       147 

seem  by  contrast  more  seductive  to  us  than 
the  vice  of  the  Bowery  is  that  Babylon  is 
gone  and  the  Bowery  isn't. 

Likewise  the  night  life  of  San  Francisco, 
of  which  in  times  past  I  had  read  so  much, 
was  disillusionizing,  because  it  wasn't  vis- 
ible to  the  naked  eye.  On  this  proposition 
Los  Angeles  puts  it  all  over  San  Francisco; 
for  this,  though,  there  is  an  easy  explana- 
tion. Los  Angeles  boasts  what  is  said  to 
be  the  completest  trolley  system  in  the 
world;  undoubtedly  it  is  the  noisiest  in  the 
world.  The  tracks  seem  to  run  through 
every  street;  there  is  a  curve  at  every  cor- 
ner, I  think,  and  a  switch  in  the  middle  of 
every  block.  Every  thirty  seconds  or  so  a 
car  comes  along,  and  it  always  comes  at  top 
speed  and  takes  the  curve  without  slacken- 
ing up;  and  the  motorman  is  always  clang- 
ing his  gong  in  a  whole-souled  manner  that 
would  entitle  him  to  membership  in  the 
Swiss  Bellringers. 

Naturally  the  folks  in  Los  Angeles  stay 
up  late — they  can't  figure  on  doing  much 
sleeping  anyhow;  but  either  San  Francisco 
has  fewer  trolley  cars  to  the  acre  or  else 


148   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  motormen  are  not  quite  so  musically 
inclined,  and  people  may  get  to  bed  at  a 
Christian  hour.  Most  of  them  do  it,  too,  if 
I  am  one  to  judge.  At  night  in  San  Fran- 
cisco I  didn't  see  a  single  owl  lunch  wagon 
or  meet  a  single  beggar.  Newsboys  were 
remarkably  scarce  and  taxicabs  seemed  to 
be  few  and  far  between.  These  things 
help  to  make  any  other  city;  without  them 
San  Francisco  still  manages  to  be  a  city— 
another  proof  of  her  individuality. 

The  old  romance  of  the  Old  San  Fran- 
cisco may  be  dead  and  buried — the  resi- 
dents unite  in  saying  that  it  is,  and  they 
ought  to  know;  but,  even  so,  New  San 
Francisco  may  well  brag  today  of  a  greater 
romance  than  any  it  ever  knew — the  ro- 
mance of  achievement.  Somebody  said 
not  long  ago  that  the  greatest  of  all  monu- 
ments to  American  pluck  was  San  Fran- 
cisco rebuilt;  but  if  there  was  pluck  in  it 
there  was  romance  too.  And  there  is  ro- 
mance, plenty  of  it,  in  the  exposition  these 
people  have  planned  and  are  now  carrying 
out  to  commemorate  the  opening  of  the 
Panama  Canal. 


The  Native  Son      149 

To  begin  with,  citizens  of  San  Francisco 
and  of  the  state  of  California  are  paying 
the  whole  bill  themselves — they  did  not 
ask  the  Federal  Government  to  contribute 
a  red  cent  of  the  millions  being  spent  and 
that  will  be  spent,  and  to  date  the  Federal 
Government  has  not  contributed  a  red  cent 
either.  Climatic  conditions  are  in  their  fa- 
vor. Other  expositions  have  had  to  contend 
with  hot  weather — sometimes  with  beastly 
hot  weather;  those  other  expositions  could 
not  open  up  until  well  into  the  spring,  and 
they  closed  perforce  with  the  coming  of 
cold  weather  in  the  fall.  But  San  Fran- 
cisco is  never  very  hot  and  never  really 
cold,  and  California  becomes  an  out-of- 
door  land  as  soon  as  the  rains  end;  so  this 
fair  will  be  actively  and  continuously  in 
operation  for  nine  months  instead  of  being 
limited  to  four  or  five  months  as  the  period 
of  its  greatest  activities. 

Then,  again,  there  is  another  advantage 
— the  exposition  grounds  are  situated  well 
within  the  city;  the  site  is  within  easy  rid- 
ing distance  of  the  civic  center  and  not 
miles  away  from  the  middle  of  town,  as 


150  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

has  been  the  case  in  certain  other  instances 
in  this  country  where  big  expositions  were 
held.  It  is  a  place  admirably  devised  by 
Nature  for  the  purposes  to  which  it  is 
now  being  put — a  six-hundred-acre  tract 
stretching  along  the  water-front,  with  the 
Presidio  at  its  farther  end,  the  high  hills 
behind  it,  and  in  front  of  it  the  exquisite 
panorama  of  the  Golden  Gate,  with  emer- 
ald islands  rising  beyond;  and  Berkeley 
and  Oakland  just  across  the  way;  and  on 
beyond,  northward  across  the  narrowing 
portals  of  the  harbor,  the  big  green  moun- 
tain of  Tamalpais,  rising  sheer  out  of  the 
sea. 

Moreover,  the  president  of  the  exposi- 
tion and  his  aides  promised  that  the  whole 
thing,  down  to  the  minutest  detail,  would  be 
completed  and  ready  months  before  the 
date  set  for  opening  the  gates — which  fur- 
nishes another  strikingly  novel  note  in  ex- 
positions, if  their  words  come  true;  and 
they  declared  that,  for  beauty  of  conception 
and  harmony  of  design,  their  exposition  of 
1915  would  surpass  any  exposition  ever  seen 
in  this  country  or  in  any  other  country. 


The  Native  Son       151 

Probably  they  are  right.  I  know  that, 
when  I  was  there,  the  view  from  the  first 
rise  back  of  the  grounds,  looking  down 
upon  that  long  flat  where  men  by  thousands 
were  toiling,  and  building  after  building 
was  rising,  made  a  picture  sufficiently  in- 
spiring to  warm  the  enthusiasm  and  brisken 
the  imagination  of  any  man,  be  he  alien  or 
native. 

There  isn't  any  doubt,  though,  that  the 
people  of  San  Francisco  are  going  to  have 
their  hands  full  when  the  exposition  visit- 
ors begin  to  pile  in.  By  that  I  do  not  mean 
that  the  housing  and  feeding  accommoda- 
tions and  the  transit  facilities  will  be  de- 
ficient; but  it  is  going  to  be  a  most  over- 
poweringly  big  job  to  educate  the  pilgrims 
up  to  the  point  where  they  will  call  San 
Francisco  by  its  full  name.  All  true  San 
Franciscans  are  very  touchy  on  this  point — 
touchy  as  hedgehogs,  they  are;  the  preju- 
dice extends  to  all  classes,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Chinese. 

I  heard  a  story  of  a  seafaring  person, 
ignorant  and  newly  arrived,  who  drifted 
into  a  waterfront  saloon,  called  for  a  sim- 


152  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

pie  glass  of  beer  and  spoke  a  few  casual 
words  of  greeting  to  the  barkeeper — and 
woke  up  the  next  morning  in  the  hospital 
with  a  very  bad  headache  and  a  bandage 
round  his  throbbing  brows.  It  developed 
that  he  had  three  times  in  rapid  succession 
referred  to  the  city  as  Frisco,  and  on  being 
warned  against  this  practice  had  inquired: 

"Well,  wot  do  you  want  me  to  call  her 
— plain  Fris?" 

That  was  the  last  straw.  The  barkeeper 
took  a  bung-starter  and  felled  him  as  flat 
as  a  felled  seam — and  all  present  agreed 
that  it  served  him  right. 

An  even  worse  breach  of  etiquette  on  the 
part  of  the  outlander  is  to  intimate  that  an 
earthquake  preceded  the  great  fire.  That 
is  positively  the  unforgivable  sin!  In  any 
quarter  of  the  city  you  could  get  many  sub- 
scriptions for  a  fund  to  buy  something 
with  silver  handles  on  it  for  any  man  who 
would  insist  upon  talking  of  earthquakes. 
To  make  my  meaning  clearer,  I  will  state 
that  there  are  only  two  objects  of  general 
use  in  the  civilized  world  that  have  silver 
handles  on  them,  and  one  of  them  is  a  lov- 


The  Native  Son       153 

ing  cup;  but  this  article  would  not  be  a 
loving  cup.  A  native  will  willingly  con- 
cede that  there  was  a  fire,  which  burned 
its  memories  deep  into  the  consciousness 
of  the  city  that  recovered  from  it  with 
such  splendid  courage  and  such  incon- 
ceivable rapidity;  but  by  common  consent 
there  was  nothing  else.  It  does  not  take 
the  stranger  long  to  get  this  point  of  view, 
either. 

If  I  were  in  charge  of  the  publicity 
work  of  the  San  Francisco  Fair  I  should 
advertise  two  attractions  that  would  surely 
appeal  to  all  the  women  in  this  country, 
and  to  most  of  the  men.  In  my  press  work 
I  would  dwell  at  length  upon  the  fact  that 
in  this  part  of  California  a  woman  may 
wear  any  weight  and  any  style  of  clothes 
—  spring  clothes,  summer  clothes,  fall 
clothes  or  winter  clothes — and  not  only  be 
perfectly  comfortable  while  so  doing,  but 
be  in  the  fashion  besides;  and  to  be  in  the 
fashion  is  a  thing  calculated  to  make  a 
woman  comfortable  whether  she  otherwise 
is  or  not. 

To  see  a  group  of  four  women  prome- 


154  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

nading  a  San  Francisco  street  on  a  pleas- 
ant morning  is  to  be  reminded  of  that  bal- 
let representing  the  Four  Seasons,  which 
we  used  to  see  in  the  second  act  of  every 
well-regulated  extravaganza.  The  woman 
nearest  the  walls  has  on  her  furs — it  is  al- 
ways cool  in  the  shade;  the  one  next  to  her 
is  wearing  the  very  latest  wrinkles  in 
spring  garniture;  the  third  one,  let  us  say, 
is  dressed  in  the  especially  becoming  frock 
she  bought  last  October;  and  the  one  on  the 
outside,  where  the  sun  shines  the  bright- 
est, is  as  summery  in  her  white  ducks  and 
her  white  slippers  as  though  she  had  just 
stepped  off  the  cover  of  the  August  num- 
ber of  a  magazine.  There  is  something, 
too,  about  the  salt-laden  breezes  of  San 
Francisco  that  gives  women  wonderful 
complexions;  that  detail,  properly  press- 
agented,  ought  to  fetch  the  entire  female 
population  of  the  United  States. 

For  drawing  the  men,  I  would  exploit 
the  great  cardinal  fact  that  nowhere  in  the 
country — not  even  in  Norfolk  or  Baltimore 
or  New  Orleans — can  you  get  better  things 
to  eat  than  in  San  Francisco.  For  its  size, 


The  Native  Son       157 

I  believe  there  are  more  good  clubs  and 
more  good  restaurants  right  there  than  in 
any  other  spot  on  the  habitable  globe.  Par- 
ticularly in  the  preparation  of  the  typical 
dishes  of  the  Coast  do  the  San  Francisco 
cooks  excel;  their  cuisine  is  based  on  a  sane 
American  foundation,  with  a  delectable 
suggestion  of  the  Spanish  in  it,  and  some- 
times with  a  traceable  suggestion  of  the 
best  there  is  in  the  Italian  and  the  Chinese 
schools  of  cookery. 

To  one  whose  taste  in  oysters  has  been 
developed  by  eating  the  full-chested  bi- 
valve of  the  Eastern  seaboard  and  the 
deep-lunged,  long-bodied  product  of  the 
Louisiana  bayous,  the  native  oyster  does 
not  greatly  appeal.  A  lot  has  been  written 
and  printed  about  the  California  oyster, 
but  in  my  opinion  he  will  always  have  con- 
siderable difficulty  in  living  up  to  his  press 
notices.  It  takes  about  a  thousand  of  him 
to  make  a  quart  and  about  a  hundred  of 
him  to  make  a  taste.  Even  then  he  doesn't 
taste  much  like  a  real  oyster,  but  more  like 
an  infinitesimal  scrap  of  sponge  where  a 
real  oyster  camped  out  overnight  once. 


158  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

There  is  a  dream  of  a  little  fish,  how- 
ever, called  a  sand  dab — he  is  a  tiny,  floun- 
der-shaped titbit  hailing  from  deep  water; 
and  for  eating  purposes  he  is  probably  the 
best  fish  that  swims — better  even  than  the 
pompano  of  the  Gulf — and  when  you  say 
that  you  are  saying  about  all  there  is  to  be 
said  for  a  fish.  And  the  big  crabs  of  the 
Pacific  side  are  the  hereditary  princes  of 
the  crab  family.  They  look  like  spread- 
eagles;  and  properly  prepared  they  taste 
like  Heaven.  I  often  wonder  what  the 
crabsters  buy  one-half  so  precious  as  the 
stuff  they  sell — which  is  a  quotation  from 
Omar,  with  original  interpolations  by  me. 
The  domestic  cheese  of  the  Sierras  is  not 
without  its  attractions  also,  whether  you  eat 
it  fresh  or  whether  you  keep  it  until  its 
general  aspect  and  prevalent  atmosphere 
are  such  as  to  satisfy  even  one  of  those 
epicurean  cheese-eaters  who  think  that  no 
cheese  is  fit  to  eat  until  you  can't. 

Another  thing  worthy  of  mention  in  con- 
nection with  this  California  school  of  cook- 
ery is  that  you  can  pay  as  little  as  you 
please  for  your  dinner  or  as  much  as  you 


The  Native  Son       159 

please.  There  are  three  standbys  of  the 
exchange  editor  that  may  be  counted  upon 
to  appear  in  the  newspapers  about  once  in 
so  often.  One  is  the  hoary-headed  and 
toothless  tale  regarding  the  artist  who  was 
hired  to  renovate  religious  paintings  in  a 
church  in  Brussels,  and  turned  in  an  item- 
ized account  including  such  entries  as— 
"Correcting  the  Ten  Commandments"; 
"Restoring  the  Lost  Souls";  "Renewing 
Heaven";  and  winding  up  with  "Doing 
Several  Odd  Jobs  for  the  Damned." 

The  second  of  the  set  comes  out  of  retire- 
ment at  frequent  intervals — whenever  some 
trusting  soul  runs  across  a  time-stained 
number  of  the  Ulster  Gazette  giving  de- 
tails of  the  death  of  George  Washington— 
I  wonder  how  many  million  copies  of  that 
venerable  counterfeit  were  printed — and 
writes  in  to  his  home  editor  about  it. 

And  the  third,  the  most  popular  clipping 
of  the  three,  concerns  the  prices  that  used 
to  govern  at  the  mining  camps  in  the  days 
of  the  early  gold  rush.  The  story  that  is 
most  commonly  quoted  has  to  do  with  the 
menu  of  the  El  Dorado  Hotel,  at  Placer- 


160  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

ville,  where  bean  soup  was  a  dollar  a  plate; 
hash,  lowgrade,  seventy-five  cents;  hash, 
eighteen-carat,  a  dollar — and  so  on  down 
the  list  to  seventy-five  cents  for  two  Irish 
potatoes,  peeled. 

The  cost  of  living  may  have  gone  down 
subsequently  in  those  parts,  but  it  has  gone 
back  up  again — at  certain  favored  spots. 
If  the  Argonauts,  those  hardy  adventurers 
who  flung  their  gold  round  so  regardlessly 
and  were  not  satisfied  unless  they  paid  out- 
rageously big  prices  for  everything,  could 
come  back  today  they  would  have  no  cause 
to  complain  at  the  contemptible  paucity  of 
the  bill  after  they  had  dined  at  any  one  of 
half  a  dozen  ultra-expensive  hotels  that  are 
to  be  found  dotted  along  the  Coast. 

I  append  herewith  a  few  items  selected 
at  random  from  the  price  card  of  a  fash- 
ionable establishment  in  one  of  the  larger 
Coast  cities:  caviar  imperial  d'Astracan, 
two  dollars  for  a  double  portion;  buffet 
Russe  —  whatever  that  is  —  ninety  cents; 
German  asparagus,  a  single  helping,  one 
dollar  and  forty  cents;  blue-point  oysters, 
fifty  cents;  fifty  cents  for  clams;  Gorgon- 


The  Native  Son       161 

zola  cheese,  fifty  cents  a  portion;  and,  in  a 
land  where  peaches  and  figs  grow  any- 
where and  everywhere,  seventy-five  cents 
for  an  order  of  brandied  peaches  and  fifty 
cents  for  an  order  of  spiced  figs.  Even  sea- 
soned New  Yorkers  have  been  known  to 
breathe  hard  on  receiving  a  check  for  a 
full  meal  at  certain  restaurants  in  Los  An- 
geles and  San  Francisco. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  can  step  round 
any  corner  in  San  Francisco  and  walk  into 
that  institution  which  people  in  other  large 
cities  are  forever  seeking  and  never  finding 
— a  table-d'hote  restaurant  where  a  perfect 
meal  is  to  be  had  at  a  most  moderate  price. 
The  best  Italian  restaurant  in  the  world— 
and  I  wish  to  say,  after  personal  experience, 
that  Sunny  Italy  itself  is  not  barred — is  a 
little  place  on  the  fringe  of  the  Barbary 
Coast. 

There  is  another  place  not  far  away 
where,  for  a  dollar,  you  get  a  bottle  of 
good  domestic  wine  and  a  selection  from 
the  following  range  of  dishes:  Celery,  ripe 
olives,  green  olives,  radishes,  onions,  let- 
tuce, sliced  tomatoes,  combination  salad 


162  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

or  crab-meat  salad;  soup — onion  or  con- 
somme; fish — sole,  salmon,  bass,  sand  dabs, 
mussels  or  clams;  entrees — sweetbreads 
with  mushrooms,  curry  of  lamb,  calf's 
tougue,  tripe  with  peppers,  tagliatini  a 
1'Italienne,  or  boiled  kidney  with  bacon; 
vegetables  —  asparagus,  string-beans  and 
cauliflower;  roast — spring  lamb  with  green 
peas,  broiled  chicken  or  broiled  pig's  feet; 
dessert — rhubarb  pie,  ice  cream  and  cake, 
apple  sauce,  stewed  fruits,  baked  pear  or 
baked  apple,  mixed  fruits;  cheese  of  three 
varieties,  and  coffee  to  wind  up  on. 

The  proprietor  doesn't  cut  out  his  por- 
tions with  a  pair  of  buttonhole  scissors, 
either,  or  sauce  them  with  a  medicine- 
dropperful  of  gravy.  He  gives  a  big,  full, 
satisfying  helping,  well  cooked  and  well 
served.  There  is  some  romance  in  the  San 
Francisco  cooking,  too,  if  the  oldtimers 
who  bemourn  the  old  days  only  realized  it. 

If  this  seeming  officiousness  on  the  part 
of  a  passing  wayfarer  may  be  excused  there 
is  one  more  suggestion  I  should  like  to 
throw  off  for  the  benefit  of  the  promoters 
of  the  exposition.  Living  somewhere  in 


The  Native  Son       163 

California  is  a  man  who  should  be  looked 
up  before  the  gates  are  opened,  and  he 
should  be  retained  at  a  salary  and  staked 
out  in  suitable  quarters  as  a  special  and 
added  attraction.  He  is  the  most  mag- 
nificent fish-liar  in  the  known  world!  I 
do  not  know  his  name — he  was  so  busy 
pouring  fish  stories  down  a  party  of  us 
that  he  didn't  take  time  to  stop  and  tell  his 
name — but  no  great  difficulty  should  be  ex- 
perienced in  finding  him.  There  is  only 
one  of  him  alive — these  world's  wonders 
never  occur  in  pairs.  That  would  cheapen 
them  and  make  them  commonplace. 

He  swam  into  our  ken — if  a  mixed  meta- 
phor may  be  pardoned — on  a  train  leav- 
ing Oakland  for  the  East.  We  were  sit- 
ting in  the  club  car — half  a  dozen  or  so  of 
us — when  he  drifted  along.  At  first  look  no 
one  would  have  suspected  him  of  being  so 
gifted  a  creature  as  he  proved  himself  to 
be.  He  was  a  round,  short,  tub-shaped 
man,  with  a  button  nose,  and  a  double  chin 
that  ran  all  the  way  round  and  lapped  over 
at  the  back.  But,  though  his  appearance  was 
deceiving,  anybody  could  tell  with  half  an 


164  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

eye  that  he  excelled  in  extemporaneous 
conversation.  Right  off  he  began  shadow- 
boxing  and  sparring  about,  waiting  for  an 
opening.  In  a  minute  he  got  it. 

The  tall  man  with  the  long  face  and  the 
stiff  white  pompadour,  who  looked  like  a 
patent  toothbrush,  gave  him  his  chance. 
The  tall  man  happened  to  look  out  of  the 
car  window  and  see  in  an  inlet  a  fleet  of 
beached  fishing  boats,  and  he  remarked  on 
their  picturesqueness.  That  was  the  cue. 

"Speaking  of  fishing,"  said  the  button- 
nosed  man,  "I'll  tell  you  people  something 
that'll  maybe  interest  you.  You  may  not 
believe  it,  either,  me  being  a  stranger  to 
you;  but  it's  the  Gospel  truth  or  I  wouldn't 
be  sitting  here  a-telling  it.  I  reckon  I've 
done  more  fishing  in  my  day  and  more  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  fishing  than  any  man  alive. 
I  come  originally  from  a  prime  fishing 
state — Michigan — and  I've  lived  in  Colo- 
rado and  Montana  and  Oregon  and  all  the 
other  good  fishing  states  out  West.  But, 
take  it  from  me,  friends,  California  is  the 
best  fishing  state  there  is.  Yes,  sir;  when 
it  comes  to  fishing,  old  California  lays  it 


The  Native  Son       165 

over  'em  all — she  takes  the  rag  right  off 
the  bush!  I'm  the  one  that  oughter  know 
because  I've  fished  her  from  end  to  end 
and  crossways — sea  fishing,  creek  fishing, 
lake  fishing  and  all. 

"Down  at  Catalina  they'll  tell  you,  if 
you  ask  'em,  that  I'm  the  man  that  ketched 
the  biggest  tuna  that  ever  come  out  of  that 
ocean.  It  took  me  fourteen  hours  and 
forty-five  minutes  to  land  him,  and  during 
that  time  he  towed  me  and  an  eighteen- 
foot  boat,  and  the  fellow  I  had  along  for 
boatman,  over  forty-four  miles — I  meas- 
ured it  afterward  to  be  sure — and  the  fric- 
tion of  the  reel  spinning  round  wore  my 
line  down  till  it  wasn't  no  thicker  in  places 
than  a  cobweb.  But  tunas  ain't  my  regu- 
lar specialty — trouts  and  basses  are  my 
special  favorites;  and  up  in  the  mountains 
is  where  I  mostly  do  my  fishing. 

"I'm  just  sort  of  hanging  round  now 
waiting  for  the  snow  to  move  out  so's  I  can 
go  up  there  and  start  fishing. 

"Well,  sirs,  it's  funny,  ain't  it,  the  way 
luck  will  run  fishing?  Oncet  when  I  was 
living  up  there  I  fished  stiddy,  day  in  and 


166  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

day  out,  for  two  seasons  and  never  got  a 
bite  that  you  could  rightly  call  a  bite.  And 
then  all  of  a  sudden  one  afternoon  the  luck 
switched  and  in  exactly  forty-five  minutes 
by  the  watch — by  this  here  very  watch  I'm 
carrying  now  in  my  pocket — I  ketched 
seventy-two  of  them  big  old  black  basses 
out  of  one  hole;  and  they  averaged  five 
pounds  apiece!" 

We  looked  at  one  another  silently.  A 
total  of  seventy-two  five-pound  bass  in 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  seemed  a  little 
too  much  to  be  taken  as  a  first  dose  from  a 
strange  practitioner.  And  it  was  hard  to 
believe  they  had  all  been  basses;  if  only 
for  the  sake  of  variety  there  should  have 
been  at  least  one  barytone.  We  felt  that 
we  needed  time  for  reflection — and  di- 
gestion. 

Evidently  realizing  this,  one  of  our  num- 
ber undertook  to  throw  himself  into  the 
breach.  As  I  recollect,  this  volunteer  was 
the  fat  coffin  drummer  from  Des  Moines 
who  had  the  round,  smooth  face  and  the 
round,  bald  head,  and  wore  the  fuzzy 
green  hat  with  the  bow  at  the  back.  I 


The  Native  Son       167 

think  he  wore  the  bow  there  purposely— 
it  simplified  matters  so  when  you  were  try- 
ing to  decide  which  side  of  his  head  his 
face  grew  on.  He  heaved  a  pensive  sigh 
out  of  his  system  and  remarked  upon  the 
clearness  of  the  air  in  these  parts. 

"You're  right  there,  mister,"  broke  in 
the  button-nosed  man,  snapping  him  up 
instantly.  "The  air  is  tolerable  clear  here 
today;  but  you  oughter  to  see  the  air  up  in 
the  mountains!  Why,  it's  so  clear  up  there 
it  would  make  this  here  hill-country  air 
look  like  a  fog.  I  remember  oncet  I  was 
browsing  along  a  cliff  up  in  that  country, 
toting  my  fishpole,  and  I  happened  to  look 
over  the  bluff — just  so — and  down  below  I 
saw  a  hole  in  the  creek  that  was  just  crawl- 
ing with  them  big  trouts — steel-head  trouts 
and  rainbow  trouts.  I  could  see  the  spots 
on  their  sides  and  their  fins  waving,  and 
their  gills  working  up  and  down. 

"I  figured  out  that  it  was  fully  a  hun- 
dred feet  down  to  the  water  and  the  water 
would  natchelly  be  tolerable  deep;  so  I  let 
all  my  line  run  off  the  reel,  a  hundred  and 
sixty  feet  of  it;  and  I  fished  and  fished  and 


168  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

fished — and  didn't  get  a  strike,  let  alone  a 
nibble.  Yet  I  could  look  over  and  see  all 
these  hungry  trouts  down  below  looking  up 
with  expectant  looks  in  their  eyes — I  could 
see  their  eyes — and  jumping  round  regard- 
less; and  yet  not  a  bite!  So  I  changed  bait 
—changed  from  live  bait  to  dead  bait,  and 
back  again  to  live — and  still  there  wasn't 
nothing  doing.  So  I  says  to  myself:  'Some- 
thing's wrong,  sure!  This  thing'll  stand 
looking  into.' 

"So  I  snoops  round  and  finds  a  place 
where  there's  a  sort  of  a  sloping  place  in 
the  bluff;  and  I  braces  my  pole  in  a  rock 
and  leaves  it  there;  and  I  climbs  down— 
and  then  I  sees  what's  the  matter.  It  was 
that  there  clear  air  that  had  fooled  me! 
It  was  three  hundred  feet  if  it  was  an  inch 
down  from  the  top  of  that  there  bluff  to 
the  creek,  and  the  hole  was  fully  a  hun- 
dred feet  deep — maybe  more;  and  away 
down  at  the  plumb  bottom  all  them  trouts 
was  congregated  in  a  circlelike,  looking  up 
mighty  greedy  and  longing  at  my  bait, 
which  was  a  live  frog,  dangling  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-odd  feet  up  in  the  air.  But, 


IT'S  A  GREAT  THING  OUT  THERE 
TO  BE  A  NATIVE  SON 


The  Native  Son       111 

speaking  of  clear  air,  that  wasn't  nothing 
at  all  compared  to  some  other  things  I 
could  tell  you  about.  Another  time— 

At  this  point  I  rose  and  escaped  to  the 
diner.  When  I  got  back  at  the  end  of  an 
hour  the  other  survivors  told  me  that,  up 
to  the  time  he  got  off  at  Sacramento,  the 
button-nosed  man  had  been  getting  better 
and  better  all  the  time.  He  certainly 
ought  to  be  rounded  up  and  put  on  exhibit- 
ion at  the  Fair  to  show  those  puny  and 
feeble  Eastern  fish-liars  what  the  incom- 
parable Western  climate  can  produce. 

I  almost  forgot  to  mention  San  Fran- 
ciso's  chief  product — Native  Sons.  A  Na- 
tive Son  is  one  who  has  acquired  special 
merit  by  being  born  in  the  state.  You 
would  think  credit  would  be  given  to  the 
subject's  parents,  where  it  belongs;  but,  no 
—that  is  not  the  California  way.  It's  a 
great  thing  out  there  to  be  a  Native  Son. 
It  counts  in  politics,  and  in  society,  and  at 
the  clubs. 

And,  after  that,  the  next  best  thing  is  to 
be  a  Southerner,  either  by  birth  or  descent. 
People  who  have  Southern  blood  in  their 


1 12  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

veins  are  very  proud  of  it  and  can  join  a 
club  on  the  strength  of  it;  and  some  of 
them  do  a  lot  of  talking  about  it.  The 
definition  is  rather  elastic — anybody  whose 
ancestors  worked  on  the  Southern  Pacific 
is  eligible,  I  think. 

Of  course,  there  are  a  lot  of  real  South- 
erners; but  there  are  a  whole  lot  more  who 
— so  it  seemed  to  me — are  giving  remark- 
ably realistic  imitations  of  the  type  known 
in  New  York  as  the  Professional  South- 
erner. San  Francisco  excels  in  Southerners 
—the  regular  kind  and  the  self-made  kind 
both. 

I  was  out  there  too  early  in  the  year  to 
meet  the  justly  celebrated  San  Francisco 
flea.  He's  a  Native  Son,  too;  but  there 
isn't  so  much  bragging  being  done  on  his 
account. 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 


LOOKING  FOR  LO 


Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Looking  for  Lo 

IF  it  is  your  desire  to  observe  the  Red 
Indian  of  the  Plains  engaged  in  his 
tribal  sports  and  pastimes  wait  for  the 
Wild  West  Show;  there  is  sure  to  be  one 
coming  to  your  town  before  the  season  is 
over.  Or  if  you  are  bloodthirsty  by  nature 
and  yearn  to  see  him  prancing  round  upon 
the  warpath,  destroying  the  hated  paleface 
and  strewing  the  soil  with  his  shredded 
fragments,  restrain  your  longings  until  next 
fall  and  then  arrange  to  take  in  the  foot- 
ball game  between  Carlisle  and  Princeton. 
But,  whatever  you  do,  do  not  go  journey- 
ing into  the  Far  West  in  the  hope  of  find- 
ing him  in  great  number  upon  his  native 
heath,  for  the  chances  are  that  you  won't 
find  him  there  in  great  number;  and  if  you 
do  he  will  probably  be  a  considerable  dis- 
appointment to  you;  because,  unless  he  is 


176  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

paid  for  it,  the  red  brother  absolutely  de- 
clines to  be  picturesque. 

I  am  reliably  informed  that  he  is  still  rea- 
sonably numerous  in  Oklahoma,  in  North 
and  South  Dakota,  and  in  Montana  and 
Washington;  but  my  itinerary  did  not  in- 
clude those  states.  I  did  not  see  a  live 
Indian — that  is  to  say,  a  live  Indian  recog- 
nizable as  such — in  Nevada  or  in  Colorado 
or  in  Utah,  or  in  a  four-hour  run  across 
one  corner  of  Wyoming. 

In  upward  of  a  thousand  miles  of  travel 
through  California  I  saw  just  one  Indian 
— a  bronze  youth  of  perhaps  twenty  sum- 
mers and,  I  should  say,  possibly  half  that 
many  baths.  He  was  wearing  the  scenario 
of  a  pair  of  overalls  and  a  straw  hat  in  an 
advanced  state  of  decrepitude,  and  he  was 
working  in  a  truckpatch;  if  a  native  had 
not  told  me  what  he  was  I  would  have 
passed  him  by  for  a  sunburnt  hired  hand. 

I  saw  a  few  Indians  in  New  Mexico  and 
a  few  more  in  Arizona,  but  not  a  great 
many  at  that;  and  these,  as  I  found  out 
later,  were  mainly  engaged  to  linger  in  the 
vicinity  of  stations  and  hotels  along  the  line 


Looking  for  Lo       111 

for  the  purpose  of  adding  a  touch  of  color 
to  the  surroundings  and  incidentally  selling 
souvenirs  to  the  tourists. 

Mind  you,  I'm  not  saying  there  are  not 
plenty  of  Indians  in  those  states;  but  they 
mostly  stay  on  their  reservations  and  the 
reservations  unfortunately  are  not,  as  a 
rule,  near  the  railroad  stations.  A  traveler 
going  through  the  average  small  Southern 
town  sees  practically  the  entire  strength  of 
the  colored  citizenry  gathered  at  the  depot 
and  jumps  at  the  conclusion  that  the  popu- 
lation is  from  ninety  to  ninety-five  per  cent, 
black.  In  the  West  he  sees  maybe  one  lit- 
tle Indian  settlement  in  a  stretch  of  five  or 
six  hundred  miles,  and  he  figures  that  the 
Indian  is  practically  an  extinct  species. 

Of  course,  though,  he  is  not  extinct.  In 
these  piping  commercial  days  of  acute  com- 
petition he  has  no  time  to  be  gallivanting 
down  to  the  depot  every  time  a  through 
train  rolls  in,  especially  as  the  depot  is  fre- 
quently eighty  or  ninety  miles  distant  from 
his  domicile.  He  is  closely  confined  at  home 
turning  out  souvenirs.  It  is  a  pity,  too,  that 
he  cannot  spare  more  of  his  time  for  this 


178  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

simple  and  inexpensive  pleasure.  In  one 
week's  study  of  the  passing  tourist  breed  he 
could  see  enough  funny  sights  and  hear 
enough  funny  things — unintentionally  fun- 
ny things — to  keep  his  family  entertained 
on  many  a  long  winter's  evening  as  they 
sit  peacefully  in  the  wigwam  making 
knickknacks  for  the  Eastern  trade. 

No,  sirree!  Those  Southwestern  tribes 
are  far  from  being  extinct — especially  the 
Navajos.  You  can,  in  a  way,  approximate 
the  tribal  strength  of  the  Navajos  by  the 
number  of  Navajo  blankets  you  see.  From 
Colorado  to  the  Coast  the  Navajo  blanket 
carpets  the  earth.  I'll  bet  any  amount 
within  reason  that  in  six  weeks'  time  I  saw 
ten  million  Navajo  blankets  if  I  saw  one. 
As  for  other  things — bows  and  arrows,  for 
example — well,  I  do  not  wish  to  exagger- 
ate; but  had  I  bought  all  the  wooden  bows 
and  arrows  that  were  offered  to  me  I  could 
take  them  and  build  a  rustic  footbridge 
across  the  Delaware  River  at  Trenton, 
with  a  neat  handrail  all  the  way  over. 
Taking  the  figures  of  the  last  census  as  a 
working  basis  I  calculate  that  each  Navajo 


Looking  for  Lo       181 

squaw  weaves,  on  an  average,  nine  thou- 
sand blankets  a  year;  and  while  she  is 
so  engaged  her  husband,  the  metal  worker 
of  the  establishment,  is  producing  a  couple 
of  tons  of  silver  bracelets  set  with  tur- 
quoises. For  prolixity  of  output  I  know  of 
no  female  in  the  entire  animal  kingdom 
that  can  compare  with  the  Navajo  squaw 
—unless  it  is  the  lady  Potomac  shad. 

Right  here  I  wish  to  claim  one  proud 
distinction:  I  went  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific  and  back  again — and  I  did 
not  buy  a  single  blanket!  Since  the  return 
of  the  Lewis  &  Clark  expedition  I  am 
probably  the  only  white  person  who  has 
ever  done  this.  Goodness  knows  the  call 
was  strong  enough  and  the  opportunities 
abundant  enough;  blankets  were  available 
for  my  inspection  at  every  railroad  station, 
at  every  hotel,  and  at  every  one  of  two 
hundred  thousand  souvenir  stores  that  I 
encountered — but  I  was  under  orders  from 
headquarters. 

As  we  were  bidding  farewell  to  our 
family  before  starting  West,  our  wife  said 
to  us  in  firm,  decided  accents:  "I  have 


182  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

already  picked  out  a  place  where  we  can 
hide  the  Cheyenne  war-bonnet.  We  can 
get  rid  of  the  moccasins  and  the  stone 
hatchets  and  the  beadwork  breastplates  by 
storing  them  in  a  trunk  up  in  the  attic. 
But  do  not  bring  a  Navajo  blanket  back 
to  this  already  crowded  establishment!"  So 
we  restrained  ourselves.  But  it  was  a  hard 
struggle  and  took  a  heroic  effort. 

I  recall  one  blanket,  done  in  gray  and 
black  and  red  and  white,  and  decorated 
with  the  figures  of  the  Thunder  Bird  and 
the  Swastika,  the  Rising  Sun  and  the  Jig 
Saw,  and  other  Indian  signs,  symbols  and 
emblems.  It  was  with  the  utmost  diffi- 
culty that  I  wrenched  myself  away  from 
the  vicinity  of  this  treasure.  And  then, 
when  I  got  back  home,  feeling  proud 
as  Punch  over  having  withstood  tempta- 
tion in  all  its  forms,  almost  the  first  words 
I  heard,  spoken  in  tones  of  deep  disap- 
pointment, were  these:  "Well,  why  didn't 
you  bring  a  Navajo  blanket  for  the  den? 
You  know  we've  always  wanted  one!" 
Wasn't  that  just  like  a  woman? 

Though  I  refrained  from  seeking  bar- 


Looking  for  Lo       183 

gains  in  the  blankets  of  the  aborigine,  I 
sought  diligently  enough  for  the  aborigine 
himself.  I  had  my  first  glimpse  of  him 
in  Northern  New  Mexico  just  after  we 
had  come  down  out  of  Colorado.  Accom- 
panied by  his  lady,  he  was  languidly  re- 
posing on  the  platform  in  front  of  a  de- 
pot, with  his  wares  tastefully  arranged  at 
his  feet.  As  a  concession  to  the  acquired 
ideals  of  the  Eastern  visitor  he  had  a  red 
sofa  tidy  draped  round  his  shoulders,  and 
there  was  a  tired-looking  hen-feather 
caught  negligently  in  his  back  hair;  and 
his  squaw  displayed  ornamented  leggings 
below  the  hems  of  her  simple  calico  walk- 
ing skirt.  But  these  adornments,  I  gath- 
ered, constituted  the  calling  costume,  so  to 
speak. 

When  at  home  in  his  village  the  uni- 
versal garment  of  the  Pueblo  male  is  the 
black  sateen  shirt  of  commerce.  He  puts 
it  on  and  wears  it  until  it  is  taken  up  by 
absorption,  and  then  it  is  time  to  put  on 
another.  These  shirts  do  not  require  wash- 
ing; but,  among  the  best  Pueblo  families, 
I  understand  it  is  customary — once  in  so 


184  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

often — to  have  them  searched.  And  thus 
is  the  wild  life  of  the  West  kept  down. 

Farther  along  the  line,  in  Arizona,  we 
met  the  Hopi  and  the  Navajo — delegations 
from  both  of  these  tribes  having  been  im- 
ported from  the  reservations  to  give  an 
added  touch  of  picturesqueness  to  the  prin- 
cipal hotel  of  the  Grand  Canon.  The 
Hopi,  who  excels  at  snake  dancing  and  pot- 
tery work,  is  a  mannerly  little  chap;  and 
his  daughter,  with  her  hair  done  up  in 
elaborate  whorl  effects  in  fancied  imitation 
of  the  squash  blossom — the  squash  being 
the  Hopi  emblem  of  purity — is  a  decidedly 
attractive  feature  of  the  landscape. 

The  Hopi  women  are  industrious  little 
bodies,  clever  at  basket  weaving — and  the 
men  work,  too,  when  not  engaged  in  at- 
tending lodge;  for  the  Hopis  are  the  rit- 
ualists of  the  Southwest,  and  every  Hopi 
is  a  confirmed  joiner.  Their  secret  soci- 
eties exist  to-day,  uncorrupted  and  un- 
changed, just  as  they  have  survived  for 
hundreds  and  perhaps  thousands  of  years. 
In  the  Hopi  House  at  Grand  Canon  there 
is  a  reproduction  of  a  kiva  or  underground 


Looking  for  Lo        185 

temple.  It  isn't  underground — it  is  located 
upstairs;  but  in  all  other  regards  it  is 
supposed  to  conform  exactly  to  one  of  the 
real  ceremonial  chambers  of  the  Hopis. 
The  dried-mud  walls  are  covered  thickly 
with  symbolic  devices,  painted  on;  and 
there  is  an  altar  tricked  out  with  totems 
of  the  Powamu  clan,  one  of  the  biggest  of 
these  societies. 

Just  in  front  of  the  altar,  with  its  wooden 
figures  of  the  War  God,  the  God  of  Grow- 
ing Things,  and  the  God  of  Thunder,  is 
a  sand  painting  set  in  the  floor  like  a 
mosaic.  When  one  of  the  clans  is  getting 
ready  for  a  service  the  official  high  priest 
or  medicine  man  of  that  particular  clan 
sprinkles  clean  brown  sand  upon  the  flat 
earth  before  the  altar  and  upon  this  found- 
ation, by  trickling  between  his  thumb  and 
forefinger  tiny  streams  of  sands  of  other 
colors,  he  makes  the  mystic  figures  that  he 
worships.  After  the  rites  are  over  he  ob- 
literates the  design  with  his  hand,  leaving 
the  space  bare  for  the  next  clan. 

In  the  Hopi  House  at  Grand  Canon  a 
sand  painting  sacred  to  the  Antelope  clan 


186  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

is  preserved  under  glass  for  the  benefit  of 
visitors.  The  manager  of  the  establish- 
ment, a  Mr.  Smith,  who  has  spent  most 
of  his  life  among  the  tribes  of  Arizona, 
told  us  a  story  about  this. 

Two  years  ago  this  summer,  a  party  of 
Mystic  Shriners  on  an  excursion  visited 
the  canon.  Mr.  Smith  chaperoned  one 
group  of  them  on  their  tour  through  the 
Hopi  House.  In  the  sand  painting  of  the 
kiva  they  seemed  to  find  something  that 
particularly  interested  them.  They  put 
their  heads  together,  talking  in  undertones 
and  pointing — so  Smith  said — first  at  one 
design  and  then  at  another.  An  old  Hopi 
buck,  a  priest  of  the  Antelope  clan,  was 
lounging  in  the  low  doorway  watching 
them.  What  the  Shriners  said  to  one  an- 
other could  have  had  no  significance  for 
him,  even  admitting  that  he  heard  them, 
for  he  did  not  understand  a  word  of  Eng- 
lish; but  suddenly  he  reached  forth  a  with- 
ered hand  and  plucked  Smith  by  the  sleeve. 
I  am  letting  Smith  tell  the  rest  of  the  tale 
just  as  he  told  it  to  us : 

"The  Hopi  pointed  to  one  of  the  Shrin- 


Looking  for  Lo       187 

ers,  an  elderly  man  who  came,  I  think, 
from  somewhere  in  Illinois,  and  in  his 
own  tongue  he  said  to  me :  'That  man  with 
the  white  hair  is  a  Hopi — and  he  is  a 
member  of  my  clan!'  I  said  to  him:  'You 
speak  foolishness — that  man  comes  from  the 
East  and  never  until  to-day  saw  a  Hopi 
in  his  whole  life!'  The  medicine  man 
showed  more  excitement  than  I  ever  saw 
an  Indian  show. 

"'You  are  lying  to  me!'  he  said.  'That 
white-haired  man  is  a  Hopi,  or  else  his 
people  long  ago  were  Hopis.'  I  laughed 
at  him  and  that  ruffled  his  dignity  and  he 
turned  away,  and  I  couldn't  get  another 
word  out  of  him. 

"As  the  Shriners  were  passing  out  I 
halted  the  white-haired  man  and  said  to 
him:  'The  Hopi  medicine  man  insists  that 
you  are  a  Hopi  and  that  you  know  some- 
thing about  his  clan.'  'Well,'  he  said,  'I'm 
no  Hopi;  but  I  think  I  do  know  something 
about  some  of  the  things  he  seems  to  re- 
vere. Where  is  this  medicine  man?' 

"I  pointed  to  where  the  old  Indian  was 
squatted  in  a  corner,  sulking;  he  walked 


188  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

right  over  to  him  and  motioned  to  him, 
and  the  Hopi  got  up  and  they  went  into 
the  kiva  together.  I  do  not  know  what 
passed  between  them — certainly  no  words 
passed — but  in  about  ten  minutes  the 
Shriner  came  out,  and  he  had  a  puzzled 
look  on  his  face. 

"  'I've  just  had  the  most  wonderful  ex- 
perience,' he  said  to  me,  'that  I've  ever  had 
in  my  whole  life.  Of  course  that  Indian 
isn't  a  Mason,  but  in  a  corrupted  form  he 
knows  something  about  Masonry;  and 
where  he  learned  it  I  can't  guess.  Why, 
there  are  lodges  in  this  country  where  I 
actually  believe  he  could  work  his  way 


in.' 


Not  being  either  a  Mason  or  a  Hopi, 
I  cannot  undertake  to  vouch  for  the  story 
or  to  contradict  it;  but  Smith  has  the  repu- 
tation of  being  a  truthful  man. 

The  Navajos  are  the  aristocrats  of  the 
Southwestern  country.  They  are  dignified, 
cleanly  in  their  personal  habits,  and  or- 
derly; and  they  are  wonderful  artisans. 
In  addition  to  being  wonderful  weavers 
and  excellent  silversmiths,  they  shine  at 


Looking  for  Lo        189 

agriculture  and  at  stock  raising  and  sheep 
raising.  They  are  born  horse-traders,  too, 
and  at  driving  a  bargain  it  is  said  a  buck 
Navajo  can  spot  a  Scotchman  five  balls 
any  time  and  beat  him  out;  but  they  have 
the  name  of  being  absolutely  honest  and 
absolutely  truthful. 

This  same  Mr.  Smith,  who  has  lived 
several  years  on  the  Navajo  reservation  and 
who  is  an  adopted  member  of  the  tribe, 
took  several  of  us  to  pay  a  formal  call 
upon  a  Navajo  subchief,  who  spends  the 
tourist  season  at  the  Grand  Canon.  The 
old  chap,  long-haired  and  the  color  of  a 
prime  smoke-cured  ham,  received  us  with 
perfect  courtesy  into  his  winter  residence, 
the  same  being  a  circular  hut  contrived 
by  overlapping  timbers  together  in  a  kind 
of  basket  design  and  then  coating  the  logs 
inside  and  out  with  adobe  clay. 

The  place  was  clean  and  free  from  all 
unpleasant  odors.  In  the  middle  of  the 
floor  a  fire  burned,  the  smoke  escaping 
through  a  hole  in  the  roof.  At  one  side 
was  the  primitive  forge,  where  the  head 
of  the  house  worked  in  metals;  and  against 


190  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  far  wall  his  squaw  was  hunkered  down, 
weaving  a  blanket  on  her  wooden  loom. 
A  couple  of  his  young  offspring  were 
playing  about,  dressed  simply  in  their  little 
negligee-strings.  The  mud  walls  were 
hung  with  completed  blankets.  Long, 
stringy  strips  of  dried  beef  and  mutton— 
the  national  dishes  of  the  tribe — were 
dangling  from  cross-pieces  overhead;  and 
on  a  rug  upon  the  earthen  floor  lay  a  glit- 
tering pile  of  bracelets  and  brooches  that 
had  been  made  by  the  old  man  out  of 
Mexican  dollars.  When  we  came  away, 
after  spending  fifteen  minutes  or  so  as  their 
guests,  the  whole  family  came  with  us; 
but  the  old  man  tarried  a  minute  to  fasten 
a  small  brass  padlock  through  a  hasp  upon 
his  wattled  wooden  door. 

"Up  on  the  reservation,  away  from  the 
railroads  and  the  towns,  there  are  no  locks 
upon  the  doors,"  Smith  said. 

"Why  is  that?"  I  asked. 

Smith  grinned.  "I'll  tell  the  old  man 
what  you  said  and  let  him  answer." 

He  clucked  in  guttural  monosyllables  to 
the  chief,  and  the  chief  clucked  back 


Looking  for  Lo        191 

briefly,  meanwhile  eyeing  me  with  a  whim- 
sical squint  out  of  his  puckered  old  eyes. 
And  then  Smith  translated : 

"Why  should  we  lock  our  doors  in  the 
place  where  we  live?  There  are  no  white 
men  there!" 

I  will  confess  that  as  a  representative  of 
the  dominant  Caucasian  stock  I  had,  for 
the  moment,  no  apt  reply  ready.  Later  I 
thought  of  a  very  fitting  retort,  which  un- 
doubtedly would  have  flattened  that  im- 
pertinent Indian  as  flat  as  a  flounder; 
unfortunately,  though,  it  only  came  to  me 
after  several  days  of  study,  and  by  that  time 
I  was  upward  of  a  thousand  miles  away 
from  him.  But  I  am  saving  it  to  use  on 
him  the  next  time  I  go  back  to  the  Grand 
Canon.  No  mere  Indian  can  slander  our 
race,  even  if  he  is  telling  the  truth — not 
while  I'm  around! 

Down  in  Southern  California  I  rather 
figured  on  finding  a  large  swarm  of  Mis- 
sion Indians  clustering  about  every  Mis- 
sion; but,  alas!  they  weren't  there,  either. 
We  saw  a  few  worshipers  and  plenty  of 
tourists,  but  no  Indians — at  least,  I  didn't 


192   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

see  any  personally.  There  is  something 
wonderfully  impressive  about  a  first  trip 
to  any  one  of  those  old  gray  churches; 
everything  about  it  is  eloquent  with  memo- 
ries of  that  older  civilization  which  this 
Western  country  knew  long  before  the  Celt 
and  the  Anglo-Saxon  breeds  came  over  the 
Divide  and  down  the  Pacific  Slope,  filled 
with  their  lust  for  gold  and  lands,  craving 
ever  more  power  and  more  territory  over 
which  to  float  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 

The  vanished  day  of  the  Spaniard  now 
lives  only  within  the  walls  of  the  early 
Missions,  but  it  invests  them  with  that 
added  veneration  which  attaches  to  what- 
ever is  old  and  traditional  and  historic. 
We  haven't  a  great  deal  that  is  very  old 
in  our  own  country;  maybe  that  explains 
why  we  fuss  over  it  so  when  we  come 
across  it  in  Europe. 

There  is  one  Mission  which  in  itself,  it 
seemed  to  me,  is  almost  worth  a  trip  clear 
across  the  continent  to  see — the  one  at  San- 
ta Barbara.  It  is  up  the  side  of  a  gentle 
foothill,  with  the  mountains  of  the  Coast 
Range  behind  it.  Down  below  the  roofs 


Looking  for  Lo        195 

and  spires  of  a  brisk  little  city  show 
through  green  clumpage,  and  still  farther 
beyond  the  blue  waters  of  the  Pacific  may 
be  seen. 

Parts  of  this  Mission  are  comparatively 
new;  there  are  retouchings  and  restorations 
that  date  back  only  sixty  or  seventy  years, 
but  most  of  it  speaks  to  you  of  an  earlier 
century  than  this  and  an  earlier  race  than 
the  one  that  now  peoples  the  land.  You 
pass  through  walls  of  solid  masonry  that 
are  sixteen  feet  thick  and  pierced  by  nar- 
row passages;  you  climb  winding  stairs  to 
a  squat  tower  where  sundry  cracked  brazen 
bells,  the  gifts  of  Spanish  gentlemen  who 
died  a  hundred  years  ago  perhaps,  swing 
by  withes  of  ancient  rawhide  from  great, 
worm-gnawed,  hand-riven  beams;  you  walk 
through  the  Mission  burying-ground,  past 
crumbly  old  family  vaults  with  half-oblit- 
erated names  and  titles  and  dates  upon 
their  ovenlike  fronts,  and  you  wander  at 
will  among  the  sunken  individual  graves 
under  the  palms  and  pepper  trees. 

Most  convincing  of  all  to  me  were  the 
stone-flagged  steps  at  the  door  of  the 


196  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

church  itself,  for  they  are  all  worn  down 
like  the  teeth  of  an  old  horse — in  places 
they  are  almost  worn  in  two.  Better  than 
any  guidebook  patter  of  facts  and  figures 
—better  than  the  bells  and  the  graves  and 
the  hand-made  beams — these  steps  convey 
to  the  mind  a  sense  of  age. 

You  stand  and  look  at  them,  and  you 
see  there  the  tally  of  vanished  generations 
— the  heavy  boot  of  the  conquistador;  the 
sandaled  foot  of  the  old  padre;  the  high 
heel  of  a  dainty  Spanish-born  lady;  the 
bare,  horny  sole  of  the  Indian  convert- 
each  of  them  taking  its  tiny  toll  out  of 
stone  and  mortar — each  of  them  wearing 
away  its  infinitesimal  mite — until  through 
years  and  years  the  firm  stone  was  scored 
away  and  channeled  out  and  left  at  it  is 
now,  with  curves  in  it  and  deep  hollows. 

Given  a  dime's  worth  of  imagination  to 
start  on,  almost  any  one  could  people  that 
spot  with  the  dead-and-gone  figures  of  that 
shadowy  past;  could  forget  the  trolley  cars 
curving  right  up  to  the  walls;  the  electric 
lights  strung  in  globular  festoons  along  the 
ancient  ceilings  of  the  porticoes;  the  roofs 


Looking  for  Lo        197 

of  the  new,  shiny  modern  bungalows  dot- 
ting the  gentle  slopes  below — could  forget 
even  that  the  brown-cowled,  rope-girthed 
father  who  served  as  guide  spoke  with  a 
strong  German  accent;  could  almost  for- 
give the  impious  driver  of  the  rig  that 
brought  one  here  for  referring  to  this  place 
as  the  Mish.  But  be  sure  there  would  be 
one  thing  to  bring  you  hurtling  back  again 
to  earth,  no  matter  how  far  aloft  your  fancy 
soared — and  that  would  be  the  ever-present 
souvenir-collecting  tourist,  to  whom  no 
shrine  is  holy  and  no  memory  is  sacred. 

There  is  no  charge  for  admission  to  the 
Mission.  All  comers,  regardless  of  breed 
or  creed,  are  welcomed;  and  on  constant 
duty  is  a  gentle-voiced  priest,  ready  to  lead 
the  way  to  the  inner  rooms  where  priceless 
relics  of  the  day  when  the  Spaniards  first 
came  to  California  are  displayed;  and  into 
the  church  itself,  with  its  candles  burning 
before  the  high  altar  and  the  quaint  old 
holy  pictures  ranged  thick  upon  the  walls; 
and  through  the  burying-ground — and  to 
all  the  rest  of  it;  and  for  this  service  there 
is  nothing  to  pay.  On  departing  the  vis- 


198   Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

itor,  if  he  chooses,  may  leave  a  coin  be- 
hind; but  he  doesn't  have  to — it  isn't  com- 
pulsory. 

There  is  a  kind  of  traveler  who  repays 
this  hospitality  by  defiling  the  walls  with 
his  inconsequential  name,  scratched  in  or 
scrawled  on,  and  by  toting  away  as  a  sou- 
venir whatever  portable  object  he  can  con- 
fiscate when  nobody  is  looking.  Up  in  the 
bell  tower  the  masonry  is  all  defaced  and 
pocked  where  these  vandals  have  dug  at  it 
with  pocketknives;  and  as  we  were  coming 
away,  one  of  them — a  typical  specimen — 
showed  me- with  deep  pride  half  of  a  brick 
pouched  in  his  coat  pocket.  It  seemed  that 
while  the  priest's  back  was  turned  he  had 
pried  it  loose  from  the  frilled  ornamenta- 
tion of  a  vault  in  the  burying-ground  at  the 
cost  only  of  his  self-respect — admitting  that 
he  had  any  of  that  commodity  in  stock— 
and  a  broken  thumbnail.  It  was,  indeed, 
a  priceless  treasure  and  he  valued  it  ac- 
cordingly. And  yet,  at  a  distance  of  ten 
feet  in  an  ordinary  light,  no  one  not  in  the 
secret  could  have  said  offhand  whether 
that  half-brick  came  out  of  a  Mission  tomb 


Looking  for  Lo       199 

in  California  or  a  smokehouse  in  Arkansas. 

We  didn't  see  any  Indians  when  we  ran 
down  into  Mexico.  However,  we  only 
ran  into  Mexico  for  a  distance  of  a  mile 
and  a  half  below  the  California  state 
boundary,  and  maybe  that  had  something 
to  do  with  it.  By  automobile  we  rode 
from  San  Diego  over  to  the  town  of  Tia 
Juana,  signifying,  in  our  tongue,  Aunt 
Jane.  Ramona,  heroine  of  Helen  Hunt 
Jackson's  famous  novel,  had  an  aunt  called 
Jane.  I  guess  they  had  a  grudge  against 
the  lady;  they  named  this  town  after  her. 

Selling  souvenirs  to  tourists,  who  come 
daily  on  sightseeing  coaches  from  Coro- 
nado  Beach  and  San  Diego,  is  the  princi- 
pal pastime  of  the  natives  of  Tia  Juana. 
Weekdays  they  do  this;  and  sometimes  on 
a  Sunday  afternoon  they  have  a  bullfight 
in  their  little  bullring.  On  such  an  occa- 
sion the  bullfighting  outfit  is  specially  im- 
ported from  one  of  the  larger  towns  farther 
inland.  Sometimes  the  whole  troupe  comes 
from  Juarez  and  puts  on  a  regular  metro- 
politan production,  with  the  original  all- 
star  cast.  There  is  the  gallant  performer 


200  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

known  as  the  armadilla,  who  teases  the  bull 
to  desperation  by  waving  a  red  shawl  at 
him;  the  no  less  daring  parabola,  sticking 
little  barbed  boleros  in  the  bull's  withers; 
and,  last  of  all,  the  intrepid  mantilla,  who 
calmly  meets  the  final  rush  of  the  infuri- 
ated beast  and,  with  one  unerring  thrust 
of  his  trusty  sword,  delivers  the  porte- 
cochere,  or  fatal  stroke,  just  behind  the 
left  shoulder-blade,  while  all  about  the 
assembled  peons  and  pianolas  rend  the  am- 
bient air  with  their  delighted  cry:  "Hoi 
Polloi!  Hoi  Polloi!  Dolce  far  niente!" 

Isn't  it  remarkable  how  readily  the  sea- 
soned tourist  masters  the  difficulties  of  a 
foreign  language?  Before  I  had  been  in 
Mexico  an  hour  I  had  picked  up  the  in- 
tricate phraseology  of  the  bullfight;  and  I 
was  glad  afterward  that  I  took  the  trouble 
to  get  it  all  down  in  my  mind  correctly, 
because  such  knowledge  always  comes  in 
handy.  You  can  use  it  with  effect  in  com- 
pany— it  stamps  you  as  a  person  of  culture 
and  travel — and  it  impresses  other  people; 
but  then  I  always  could  pick  up  foreign 
languages  easily.  I  do  not  wish  to  boast — 
but  with  me  it  amounts  to  a  positive  gift. 


Looking  for  Lo       201 

It  was  a  weekday  when  we  visited  Tia 
Juana,  and  so  there  was  no  bullfight  going 
on;  in  fact,  there  didn't  seem  to  be  much 
of  anything  going  on.  Once  in  a  while 
a  Spigotty  lady  would  pass,  closely  fol- 
lowed by  a  couple  of  little  Spigots,  and 
occasionally  the  postmaster  would  wake  up 
long  enough  to  accept  a  sheaf  of  post- 
cards from  a  tourist  and  then  go  right  back 
to  sleep  again.  We  had  sampled  the  ta- 
males  of  the  country,  rinding  them  only 
slightly  inferior  to  the  same  article  as  sold 
in  Kansas  City,  Kansas;  and  we  had  drifted 
—three  of  us — into  a  Mexican  cafe.  It  was 
about  ten  feet  square  and  was  hung  with 
chromos  furnished  by  generous  Milwaukee 
brewers  and  other  decorations  familiar  to 
all  who  have  ever  visited  a  crossroads  bar- 
room on  our  own  side  of  the  line.  Bottled 
beer  appeared  to  be  the  one  best  bet  in 
the  drinking  line,  and  the  safest  one,  too; 
but  somehow  I  hated — over  here  upon  the 
soil  of  another  country — to  be  calling  for 
the  domestic  brews  of  our  own  St.  Louis! 
Personally  I  desired  to  conform  my  thirst 
to  the  customs  of  the  country — only  I 


202  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

didn't  know  what  to  ask  for.  I  had  learned 
the  bullfighting  language,  but  I  hadn't 
progressed  very  far  beyond  that  point. 
While  I  was  deliberating  a  Mexican  came 
in  and  said  something  in  Spanish  to  the 
barkeeper  and  the  barkeeper  got  a  bottle 
of  a  clear,  almost  colorless  fluid  out  from 
under  the  counter  and  poured  him  a  sherry 
glassful  of  it.  So  then,  by  means  of  a  ges- 
ture that  is  universal  and  is  understood  in 
all  climes,  I  indicated  to  the  barkeeper 
that  I  would  take  a  little  of  the  same. 

The  moment,  though,  that  I  had  swal- 
lowed it  I  realized  I  had  been  too  hasty. 
It  was  mescal — an  explosive  in  liquid  form 
that  is  brewed  or  stilled  or  steeped,  or 
something,  from  the  juices  of  a  certain 
variety  of  cactus,  according  to  a  favorite 
family  prescription  used  by  Old  Nick  sev- 
eral centuries  ago  when  he  was  residing 
in  this  section.  For  its  size  and  complex- 
ion I  know  of  nothing  that  is  worthy  to  be 
mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  mescal, 
unless  it  is  the  bald-faced  hornet  of  the 
Sunny  South.  It  goes  down  easily  enough 
— that  is  not  the  trouble — but  as  soon  as  it 


Looking  for  Lo        203 

gets  down  you  have  the  sensation  of  having 
swallowed  a  comet. 

As  I  said  before,  I  didn't  see  any  Indians 
in  Old  Mexico,  but  if  I  had  taken  one  more 
swig  of  the  national  beverage  I  am  satisfied 
that  not  only  would  I  have  seen  a  great 
number  of  them,  but,  with  slight  encour- 
agement, might  have  been  one  myself.  For 
the  purpose  of  assuaging  the  human  thirst 
I  would  say  that  it  is  a  mistake  on  the 
part  of  a  novice  to  drink  mescal — he  should 
begin  by  swallowing  a  lighted  kerosene 
lamp  for  practice  and  work  up  gradually; 
but  the  experience  was  illuminating  as 
tending  to  make  me  understand  why  the 
Mexicans  are  so  prone  to  revolutions.  A 
Mexican  takes  a  drink  of  mescal  before 
breakfast,  on  an  empty  stomach,  and  then 
he  begins  to  revolute  round  regardless. 

On  leaving  Tia  Juana  we  stopped  to  view 
the  fort,  which  was  the  principal  attraction 
of  the  place.  It  was  located  in  the  out- 
skirts just  back  of  the  cluster  of  adobe 
houses  and  frame  shacks  that  made  up  the 
town.  The  fort  proper  consisted  of  a  mud 
wall  about  three  feet  high,  inclosing  per- 


204  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

haps  half  an  acre  of  bare  clayey  soil.  Out- 
side the  wall  was  a  moat,  upward  of  a  foot 
deep,  and  inside  was  a  barrack.  This  bar- 
rack— I  avoid  using  the  plural  purposely — 
was  a  wooden  shanty  that  had  been  white- 
washed once,  but  had  practically  recovered 
from  it  since;  and  its  walls  were  pierced — 
for  artillery-fire,  no  doubt — with  two  win- 
dows, to  the  frames  of  which  a  few  frag- 
ments of  broken  glass  still  adhered.  Over- 
head the  flag  of  the  republic  was  flying; 
and  every  half-minute,  so  it  seemed  to  us, 
a  drum  would  beat  and  a  bugle  would 
blow  and  the  garrison  would  turn  out,  look- 
ing— except  for  their  guns — very  much  like 
a  squad  of  district-telegraph  messengers. 
They  would  evolute  across  the  parade 
ground  a  bit  and  then  retire  to  quarters 
until  the  next  call  to  arms  should  sound. 

We  could  not  get  close  enough  to  ascer- 
tain what  all  the  excitement  was  about, 
because  they  would  not  let  us.  We  were 
not  allowed  to  venture  within  fifty  yards  of 
the  outer  breastworks,  or  kneeworks;  and 
even  then,  so  the  village  authorities  warned 
us,  we  must  keep  moving.  A  woman  cam- 


Looking  for  Lo       205 

era  fiend  from  Coronado  was  along,  and 
she  unlimbered  her  favorite  instrument 
with  the  idea  of  taking  a  few  snapshots 
of  this  martial  scene. 

As  she  leveled  the  lens  a  yell  went  up 
from  somewhere,  and  out  of  the  barrack 
and  over  the  wall  came  skipping  a  little 
officer,  leaving  a  trail  of  inflammatory 
Spanish  behind  him  in  a  way  to  remind 
you  of  the  fireman  cleaning  out  the  firebox 
of  the  Through  Limited.  He  was  not 
much  over  five  feet  tall  and  his  shabby 
little  uniform  needed  the  attention  of  the 
dry  cleanser,  but  he  carried  a  sword  and 
two  pistols,  and  wore  a  brass  gorget  at  his 
throat,  a  pair  of  huge  epaulets  and  a  belt; 
and  he  had  gold  braid  and  brass  buttons 
spangled  all  over  his  sleeves  and  the  front 
of  his  coat,  and  a  pair  of  jingling  spurs 
were  upon  his  heels.  There  was  a  long 
feather  in  his  cap,  too — and  altogether,  for 
his  size,  he  was  most  impressive  to  behold. 
He  charged  right  up  to  the  abashed  camera 
lady  and,  through  an  interpreter,  explained 
to  her  that  it  was  strictly  against  the  rules 
to  permit  a  citizen  of  a  foreign  power  to 


206  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

make  any  pictures  of  the  fortifications  what- 
soever. He  appeared  to  nurse  a  horrid 
fear  that  the  secret  of  the  fortifications 
might  become  known  above  the  line,  and 
that  some  day,  armed  with  this  information, 
the  Boy  Scouts  or  a  Young  Ladies'  High 
School  might  swoop  down  and  capture  the 
whole  works.  He  explained  to  the  lady, 
that,  much  as  he  regretted  it,  if  she  per- 
sisted in  her  suspicious  and  spylike  conduct, 
he  would  have  to  smash  her  camera  for 
her.  So  she  desisted. 

The  little  officer  and  his  merry  men  had 
ample  reason  for  being  a  mite  nervous  just 
then.  Their  country  was  in  the  midst  of  its 
spring  revolution.  The  Madero  family  had 
just  been  thinned  out  pretty  extensively, 
and  it  was  not  certain  yet  whether  the  Diaz 
faction  or  the  Huerta  faction,  or  some  other 
faction,  would  come  out  on  top.  Besides, 
these  gallant  guardians  of  the  frontier  were 
a  long  way  from  headquarters  and  in  no 
position  to  figure  out  in  advance  which 
way  the  national  cat  would  jump  next.  All 
they  knew  was  that  she  was  jumping. 

Every  morning,  so  we  heard,  they  were 


Looking  for  Lo       209 

taking  a  vote  to  decide  whether  they  would 
be  Federalists  that  day  or  Liberalists,  or 
what  not;  and  the  vote  was  invested  with  a 
good  deal  of  personal  interest,  too,  because 
there  was  no  telling  when  a  superior  force 
might  arrive  from  the  interior;  and  if  they 
had  happened  to  vote  wrong  that  day  there 
was  always  the  prospect  of  their  being 
backed  up  against  a  wall,  with  nothing 
to  look  at  except  a  firing  squad  and  a  row 
of  newmade  graves. 

We  were  told  that  one  morning,  about 
three  or  four  weeks  before  the  date  of  our 
visit,  the  garrison  had  been  in  the  barrack 
casting  their  usual  ballot.  They  were 
strong  Huertaists  that  morning — it  was 
Viva  Huerta!  all  the  way.  Just  about  the 
time  the  vote  was  being  announced  a  couple 
of  visiting  Americans  in  an  automobile 
came  down  the  road  flanking  the  fort. 
There  had  been  a  rain  and  the  road  was 
slippery  with  red  mud.  As  the  driver  took 
the  turn  at  the  corner  his  wheels  began 
skidding  and  he  lost  control.  The  car 
skewed  off  at  a  tangent,  hurdled  the  moat, 
and  tore  a  hole  in  the  mud  wall;  and,  as 


210  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

the  occupants  spilled  sprawlingly  through 
the  gap,  a  front  tire  exploded  with  a  loud 
report.  The  garrison  took  just  one  look 
out  the  front  door,  jumped  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  Villa  crowd  had  arrived  and 
were  shooting  automobiles  at  them,  and 
unanimously  adjourned  by  the  back  way 
into  the  woods.  Some  of  them  did  not  get 
back  until  the  shades  of  night  had  de- 
scended upon  the  troubled  land. 

Such  is  military  life  in  our  sister  repub- 
lic in  times  of  war,  and  yet  they  sometimes 
have  a  very  realistic  imitation  of  the  real 
thing  over  there.  Revolution  before  last 
there  were  two  separate  engagements  in 
this  little  town  of  Tia  Juana.  A  lot  of 
belligerents  were  killed  and  a  good  many 
more  were  wounded. 

In  an  iron  letter  box  in  front  of  the 
post-office  we  saw  a  round  hole  where  a 
steel-jacketed  bullet  had  passed  through 
after  first  passing  through  a  prominent 
citizen.  We  did  not  see  this  citizen.  It 
became  necessary  to  bury  him  shortly  after 
the  occurrence  referred  to. 

In  vain  I  sought  the  red  brother  on  my 


Looking  for  Lo       211 

saunterings  through  California.  In  San 
Francisco  I  once  thought  I  had  him  treed. 
On  Pacific  Street,  a  block  ahead  of  me,  I 
saw  a  group  of  pedestrians,  wrapped  in 
loose  flowing  garments  of  many  colors. 
Even  at  that  distance  I  could  make  out 
that  they  were  dark-skinned  and  had  long 
black  hair.  I  said  to  myself:  "It  is  prob- 
able that  these  persons  are  connected  with 
Doctor  Somebody's  Medicine  Show;  but 
I  don't  care  if  they  are.  They  are  Indians 
— more  Indians  than  I  have  seen  in  one 
crowd  at  one  time  since  Buffalo  Bill  was 
at  Madison  Square  Garden  last  spring.  I 
shall  look  them  over." 

So  I  ran  and  caught  up  with  them — but 
they  were  not  Indians.  They  were  genu- 
ine Egyptian  acrobats,  connected  with  a 
traveling  carnival  company.  When  Moses 
transmitted  the  divine  command  to  the 
Children  of  Israel  that  they  should  spoil 
the  Egyptians,  the  Children  of  Israel  cer- 
tainly did  a  mighty  thorough  job  of  it. 
That  was  several  thousand  years  ago  and 
those  Egyptians  I  saw  were  still  spoiled. 
I  noticed  it  as  soon  as  I  got  close  to  them. 


212  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

In  Salt  Lake  City  I  saw  half  a  dozen 
Indians,  but  in  a  preserved  form  only. 
They  were  on  display  in  a  museum  devoted 
to  relics  of  the  early  days.  In  my  opinion 
Indians  do  not  make  very  good  preserves, 
especially  when  they  have  been  in  stock 
a  long  time  and  have  become  shopworn,  as 
was  the  case  with  these  goods.  Personally, 
I  would  not  care  to  invest.  Besides,  there 
was  no  telling  how  old  they  were.  They 
had  been  dug  out,  mummified,  from  the 
cliff- dwellers'  ruins  in  the  southern  part  of 
the  state,  along  with  their  household  goods, 
their  domestic  utensils,  their  weapons  of 
war  and  their  ornaments;  and  there  they 
were  laid  out  in  glass  cases  for  modern  eyes 
to  see.  There  were  plenty  of  other  inter- 
esting exhibits  in  this  museum,  including 
several  of  Brigham  Young's  suits  of  clothes. 
For  a  man  busied  with  statecraft  and  mili- 
tary affairs  and  domestic  matters,  Brigham 
Young  must  have  changed  clothes  pretty 
}ften.  I  couldn't  keep  from  wondering  how 
a  man  with  a  family  like  his  was  found  the 
time  for  it. 

To  my  mind  the  most  interesting  relic 


Looking  for  Lo       213 

in  the  whole  collection  was  the  spry  octo- 
genarian who  acted  as  guide  and  showed  us 
through  the  place — for  he  was  one  of  the 
few  living  links  between  the  Old  West  and 
the  New.  As  a  boy-convert  to  Mormonism 
he  came  across  the  desert  with  the  second 
expedition  that  fled  westward  from  Gentile 
persecution  after  Brigham  Young  had 
blazed  the  trail.  He  was  a  pony  express 
rider  in  the  days  of  the  overland  mail  ser- 
vice. He  was  also  an  Indian  fighter — one 
of  the  trophies  he  showed  was  a  scalp  of 
his  own  raising  practically,  he  having  been 
present  when  it  was  raised  by  a  friendly 
Indian  scout  from  the  head  of  the  hostile 
who  originally  owned  it — and  he  had  lived 
in  Salt  Lake  City  when  it  was  a  collection 
of  log  shanties  within  the  walls  of  a  wood- 
en stockade.  And  now  here  he  was,  a  man 
away  up  in  his  eighties,  but  still  brisk  and 
bright,  piloting  tourists  about  the  upper 
floor  of  a  modern  skyscraper. 

We  visited  the  museum  after  we  had  in- 
spected the  Mormon  Tabernacle  and  had 
looked  at  the  Mormon  Temple — from  the 
outside — and  had  seen  the  Beehive  and  the 


214  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Lion  House  and  the  Eagle  Gate  and  the 
painfully  ornate  mansion  where  Brigham 
Young  kept  his  favorite  wife,  Amelia.  The 
Tabernacle  is  famous  the  world  over  for 
its  choir,  its  organ  and  its  acoustics — par- 
ticularly its  acoustics.  The  guide,  who  is 
a  Mormon  elder  detailed  for  that  purpose, 
escorts  you  into  the  balcony,  away  up  under 
the  domed  wooden  roof;  and  as  you  wait 
there,  listening,  another  elder,  standing 
upon  a  platform  two  hundred  feet  away, 
drops  an  ordinary  pin  upon  the  floor — and 
you  can  distinctly  hear  it  fall.  At  first 
you  are  puzzled  to  decide  exactly  what  it 
sounds  like;  but  after  a  while  the  correct 
solution  comes  to  you — it  sounds  exactly 
like  a  pin  falling.  Next  to  the  Whispering 
Gallery  in  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  I 
don't  know  of  a  worse  place  to  tell  your 
secrets  to  a  friend  than  the  Mormon  Taber- 
nacle. You  might  as  well  tell  them  to  a 
woman  and  be  done  with  it! 

In  Salt  Lake  City  I  had  rather  counted 
upon  seeing  a  Mormon  out  walking  with 
three  or  four  of  his  wives — all  at  one  time. 
I  felt  that  this  would  be  a  distinct  novelty 


Looking  for  Lo       215 

to  a  person  from  New  York,  where  the 
only  show  one  enjoys  along  this  line  is  the 
sight  of  a  chap  walking  with  three  or  four 
other  men's  wives — one  at  a  time.  But 
here,  as  in  my  quest  for  the  Indian,  I  was 
disappointed  some  more.  Once  I  thought 
I  was  about  to  score.  I  was  standing  in 
front  of  the  Zion  Cooperative  Mercantile 
Establishment,  which  is  a  big  department 
store  owned  by  the  Church,  but  having  all 
the  latest  improvements,  including  bargain 
counters  and  special  salesdays.  Out  of  the 
door  came  an  elderly  gentleman  attired  in 
much  broadcloth  and  many  whiskers,  and 
behind  him  trailed  half  a  dozen  soberly 
dressed  women  of  assorted  ages. 

Filled  with  hope,  I  fell  in  behind  the 
procession  and  followed  it  across  to  the 
hotel.  There  I  learned  the  disappointing 
truth.  The  broadclothed  person  was  not  a 
Mormon  at  all. 

He  was  a  country  bank  president  from 
somewhere  back  East  and  the  women  of 
his  party  were  Ohio  school-teachers.  Any- 
where except  in  Utah  I  doubt  if  he  could 
have  fooled  me,  either,  for  he  had  the  kind 


216  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

of  whiskers  that  go  with  the  banking  pro- 
fession. For  some  reason  whiskers  are 
associated  with  the  practice  of  banking  all 
over  this  country;  hallowed  by  custom, 
they  have  come  to  stand  for  financial  re- 
sponsibility. A  New  York  banker  wears 
those  little  jib-boom  whiskers  on  the  sides 
of  his  head  and  sometimes  a  pennon  on 
his  chin,  whereas  a  country  banker  usually 
has  a  full-rigged  face.  This  man's  whisk- 
ers were  of  the  old  square  barkentine  cut. 
I  should  have  known  who  he  was  by  his 
sailing  gear. 

And  so,  disappointed  in  my  dreams  of 
seeing  Indians  on  the  hoof  and  Mormon 
households  taking  the  air  in  family  groups, 
I  left  Salt  Lake  City,  with  its  fine  wide 
streets  and  its  handsome  business  district 
and  its  pure  air  and  its  background  of 
snow-topped  mountains,  and  started  on  the 
long  homebound  hike.  It  was  late  in  the 
afternoon.  We  had  quit  Utah,  with  its  flat 
plains,  its  garden  spots  reclaimed  from  the 
desert,  and  its  endless  succession  of  trim 
red-brick  farmhouses,  which  seem  to  be 
the  universal  dwelling-places  of  the  pros- 
perous Mormon  farmer. 


Looking  for  Lo       21 7 

We  had  departed  from  the  old  trail  that 
Mark  Twain  crawled  over  in  a  stage- 
coach and  afterward  wrote  about  in  his 
immortal  Roughing  It.  The  Limited, 
traveling  forty-odd  miles  an  hour,  was 
skipping  through  the  lower  part  of  Wy- 
oming before  turning  southward  into  Colo- 
rado. We  were  in  the  midst  of  an  expanse 
of  desolation  and  emptiness,  fifteen  miles 
from  anywhere,  and  I  was  sitting  on  the 
observation  platform  of  the  rear  car,  watch- 
ing how  the  shafts  of  the  setting  sun  made 
the  colors  shift  and  deepen  in  the  canons 
and  upon  the  sides  of  the  tall  red  mesas, 
when  I  became  aware  that  the  train  was 
slowing  down. 

Through  the  car  came  the  conductor, 
with  a  happy  expression  upon  his  face. 
Behind  him  was  a  pleased-looking  flagman 
leading  by  the  arm  a  ragged  tramp  who 
had  been  caught,  up  forward  somewhere, 
stealing  a  free  ride. 

The  tramp  was  not  resisting  exactly,  but 
at  every  step  he  said: 

"You  can't  put  me  off  the  train  between 
stations!  It's  the  law  that  you  can't  put 
me  off  the  train  between  stations!" 


218  Roughing  It  De  Luxe 

Neither  the  conductor  nor  the  flagman 
said  a  word  in  answer.  As  the  conductor 
reached  up  and  jerked  the  bellcord  the 
tramp,  in  the  tone  and  manner  of  one  who 
advances  an  absolutely  unanswerable  argu- 
ment, said: 

"You  know,  don't  you,  you  can't  put  me 
off  the  train  between  stations?" 

The  train  halted.  The  conductor  un- 
fastened a  tail-gate  in  the  guard-rail,  and 
the  flagman  dropped  his  prisoner  out 
through  the  opening.  As  the  tramp  flopped 
off  into  space  I  caught  this  remark: 

"You  can't  put  me  off  the  train  between 
stations." 

The  conductor  tugged  another  signal  on 
the  bellcord,  and  the  wheels  began  to  turn 
faster  and  faster.  The  tramp  picked  him- 
self up  from  between  the  rails.  He  brushed 
some  adhering  particles  of  roadbed  off 
himself  and,  facing  us,  made  a  megaphone 
of  his  hands  and  sent  a  message  after  our 
diminishing  shapes.  By  straining  my  ears 
I  caught  his  words.  He  spoke  as  follows: 

"You  can't  put  me  off  the  train  between 
stations!" 


Looking  for  Lo       219 

In  my  whole  life  I  never  saw  a  man  who 
was  so  hard  to  convince  of  a  thing  as  that 
tramp  was. 


DE  LUXE 


